Waiting
by Mizuume
Summary: It was supposed to be a simple love story. A simple teenage blunder. A romance gone awry. But somewhere along the way, it all went wrong. Seven years, two people, two lives on one road - and an epitaph at the end of it. SK AU see profile for synopsis.
1. Prologue: No Return

Hey people :D

Yeah, I've decided to rewrite my story. It needed an overhaul – personal experiences and fine-tuning my skills has made that pretty obvious.

The story has taken an unexpected turn in the past year I've been working on it – the beginning stays the same, but it has become much more complicated than I first intended. It's now going to be up to 30 chapters, instead of 14. And I'm keeping the characters Kaoru and Soujirou, but their backgrounds are different, and – I hope – more suiting for the obstacles that will ruin them.

For the past two n a half years I've been living in Egypt, I've seen and heard things that I never will anywhere else, and I've met local women with stories to tell of their lives which are, in most cases, impossible to believe and utterly repulsive to try to imagine. It goes way past the history of the Middle East and it gets down to the people and the culture and the way they're raised as children. Because Kaoru is already a character who, by both gender and origin, has no control over her life and no affection in her family, I've changed her role into an adopted child (still Japanese/Caucasian) of a wealthy and infertile Egyptian-Saudi family. The adoption will play a suitably significant part in her life. Soujirou will have a Japanese mother and an influential Saudi Arabian/Japanesee father, both much more modern and easy going, and both are raised mostly in London. It sounds kind of random, I know. The rest of the gang will stay Asian, including Misao, Sano, Chou, Kenshin and Shougo.

I hope the change isn't too randomly confusing. I promise I will keep the whole thing making sense, though. :)

Prologue

September 2014, Cairo

_Mr. Seta;_

_This is Amjad Mounir, writing to you from Cairo. I'm sorry to tell you that my wife Kaoru, your one-time best friend, has died from heart and kidney failure. She told me to write to you, and give you her final goodbye._

_She died on the 30th of August, because she was too frail for transplants. I'm sure you know as well as I do that it's only because of her drug addictions from the past. I'm also aware that around the time she knew you, you were almost as addicted as she was. She's insisted that I tell you to quit everything you may or may not be on today – whether it's heroin, cocaine, weed, even cigarettes. Live long, and live well, because when it's your turn to follow your parents, you will have the power to change the world. That is all she wanted you to know – and you know the meaning behind it much better than I do._

_I'll have you know that I'm not writing this letter because I want to, or because I agree with whatever bond you'd illegitimately shared with my wife, but because I'm aware that she felt, until her last hour, that I've given her very little in our marriage, and taken a lot from her in the process. I never had the chance to ease her suffering while she lived, so my only atonement is to give her the listening ear that I hadn't before. This small request to write a letter to you is the very least I could do, despite the fact that she'll never get to see you read it._

_Whatever happened between you and Kaoru, you probably know is in the past. I'm just writing to you because she couldn't, to tell you that whatever past that was, it was her entire life. She lived for you, and me, and everyone she touched – she was the only one who gained nothing from her birth. That being said, all you need is to remember her._

_If you ever want to say goodbye, you'll find her grave in the garden behind Cairo's oldest and unknown cemetery, down in the Sakkara Nile Valley. Her family asked for it to be placed there, in her mother land. She used to pass the quiet place every day during her family visits before she died – apparently you were with her the first time she saw it._

_Amjad._

How long was Seven years? He asked himself.

The paper was numb in his hands, not because of the cold, but because he was so deeply disengaged from the rest of the world and from himself. Empty and spiritless could not explain what he felt as he stood before the newly laid stone, and the freshly dug grave, and surveyed the mounds of roses and sakura blossoms and carnations and orchids, all withering from the autumn's lack of sun, all there to cover up the gruesomeness and reality of what lay beneath, and what it meant. Even in death beauty had flocked towards her. It was what she was made of.

But her beauty was the last thing he needed to remember - because the contours of her face had been burned into his mind and heart since the first day they met, seven years ago. And he almost staggered with surprise, at the notion of how long ago it was when they'd first started this winding and complicated path. The entirety of seven years was buzzing through his mind, blocking out every rational thought he had a hold on. The entirety of seven years lay before him, under such horrible circumstances, and for a moment he almost lost his breath.

He had read every line of her husband's letter to him, over and over, and still the second sentence could not sink in to his mind. Even as he stood right over her body, his denial was too powerful. He hated this man with every fiber of his being, and tried desperately to convince himself that this was merely a trick.

"Kaoru," he whispered, and he swallowed hard, as if the imprint of her name on his tongue would somehow hold a material sign, reading the bond that was beyond earthly, to tell him if it still existed. But underlying the false, exhausting, futile hope that he needed just to continue breathing, he knew that the answer already lay before him, and it killed him to the point were his knees were on the grass and his hand was clenching his chest, to harness the stabbing pain that lay there. He had spent the longest hour of his life, reading over and over again the lines on her tomb, and he leaned in to read it just one more time.

_Kaoru Mounir, beloved daughter, sister, wife, and mother. Sunrise: June 2nd, 1991. Sunset: August 30th, 2014. Aged 24._

_She slipped away long before she'd wither, age, and begin to rot. The flowers in her hair were still fresh from birth, given no chance to brown and shrivel and fall out of place before she'd join the earth once more. Rest in peace._

"She slipped away… before she'd wither, age, and rot," he whispered absently, eyes wide, lips parted a little. The drizzle went unnoticed when it came. His undivided attention was on the tombstone, on the soil, on the flowers. There was nothing, absolutely nothing in this world, that could justify burying such a beautiful, such a fleeting and resilient creature in the ground to rot for all eternity, and covering the whole damn thing in flowers just to make it seem like the right thing to do. Fucking flowers, fucking consolation prize, fucking bullshit...

"_Kaoru…" he said pointedly, "How long 'til sunrise?"_

_She grinned and gently searched for Misao's right wrist under the covers. And when she finally found it, the silver rolex gave her a time to read out. "About six hours."_

_He took Misao's floppy hand from her. "12:45 AM. Not bad." He grinned. "You ready to stay up till the sun comes up all grouchy in the morning and tells us to get into bed?"_

"_Hell yeah," she said, her eyes glinting with curiousity and delight, "I will, without a doubt, chug massive amounts of beer to that."_

That was seven years. The space between that moment and this one was so far apart that the intensity of its length almost burned him. It was short to say… and it was long to live.

"Seven years…" he said, just to hear it out loud. He stared blankly at the flowers, so swept up with emotion that he could have been blind and he would have seen more with his eyes than he did now. Those seven years were his entire life – nothing before that moment in her bedroom, when he confessed everything to himself and ruined everything between them, even existed in his mind. Nobody else could have hijacked his life so completely – but he had long before decided she was more than human. The thought of it seemed so ridiculous now, as he remembered them both, a little younger, a little less responsible and a little more pure, because there was nothing inhuman about her. She was young. She was pretty. She was lively and she laughed and she played, she got wasted like any other teenager, she fooled around like any other kid. It was the only time she'd ever truly been 'normal' and it was as normal as she, or he, would ever be again.

Soujirou swiped his wrist over his face, only to find that it was soaked with tears. The moments flashed through his mind, of arguing with her in Misao's apartment, and enjoying the exasperation he caused, to seducing her one drunken night when she didn't know any better, and discarding her all the same. It was his fault, and he knew it as he crumpled to the floor at her grave, thinking of all the things he'd done, and all the things he hadn't, to lead her to this place. He was aware that he'd lead her to the man who destroyed her, and the drugs she needed to feel alive, and the overdoses she took from her desire to die, and the marriage that ultimately killed her.

In that moment, soaked in rain, up to his knees in mud, and barely able to see through the river in his eyes, he wished and wanted more passionately than he ever had before - he wished he could go back in time, to the very beginning, and undo what he'd done because… in his childlike stupidity, he'd wished to be alone and unbound. And now that he was, he hated it.

March 2007, London

"Okay," he said, back pressed flat against the open window as he identified some sturdy and arm-level objects possible to grab for balance. They would need such things to make their way across the room to the door, "She's gone now. Let's get away from the damned cold."

"Yeah, I don't mind the idea," Kaoru said, slurring her words as she reached out to grasp his arm and steady herself. The one touch was unusual enough for close friends like Soujirou and Kaoru, considering the awkward and childlike and often comedic relationship they shared. They regarded each other, when sober, almost as if they were covered in thorns. It could be said that the unease of physical touch was only due to teenage hormones. But beneath the shivers that crept down their spines, there was an electric and daunting and illegal sexuality, forcefully implied and forcefully resisted, at the simple, accidental brush of fingertips, or the casual, playful embrace, shared at greetings and goodbyes.

"I think I drank too much," Soujirou said, laughing at his own stupidity when his legs began shivering at the task of carrying his weight.

"No duh," Kaoru replied, her eyelids lazily closing over her azure eyes. "I told you not to take that last shot."

"Oh please, woman, you always want to be right."

Kaoru let out a stubborn 'hmph!' at his obnoxious comment. Both knew that it was an almost routine reaction, and she didn't bother to reply. Their conversations, drunken or not, were never all that courteous in the first place. "I don't care how drunk you are, just get me off of this friggin window, and stop pressing me into the wall, dumbass."

"Fine, fine, because you're the lady here, I'll take your damned orders," he said, curling his fingers beneath the belt of her jeans as he stepped behind her. "You lead, I'll follow."

"Why do I have to lead?" She whined without sincerity.

"Because I'm too drunk to lead," he said with a stubborn, sloppy smile, giving her a small boost ahead. He wasn't too surprised that she landed on her hands and knees on the floor.

"You little ass!" she said playfully, her speech peppered with uncontrollable giggles. Soujirou broke into laughter.

"I have never seen such terrible balance! So much for your friggin dancing skills," he chortled spitefully.

"Ugh, be a man and help me up," she demanded, because trying to stand was ridiculously hard on her own.

He groaned as though she'd asked him to write a full term paper and hoisted her up, though she landed pretty hard on his chest. "I've got you," he said, and then they both looked across the floorboards to the door.

"Let's do this," she said, her jaw hardened with determination at a task that would normally be effortless.

It would have been easier if they weren't laughing so hard at themselves, stumbling around the particularly large room, wanting somehow to communicate that this moment without Misao was one to nurture and exploit to its very limit. As she grasped the edge of her dresser, doubled over, and reached to the cabinet for support, he trailed along behind her, having to grasp the belt of her jeans to keep his own balance.

"Here," she said, placing her hands flat against the wall and using her abnormally heavy legs to move towards the door. "We can use the door, because I don' t know how much longer I can take this." She turned and rested her back against it, and, his finger caught beneath the belt of her jeans, it was impossible to dislodge his palm from its place, flat against her rounded hip. Not that he minded. He would rather hold her and pretend he didn't have a choice than free himself and move away from her warmth, and it was enough to throw him into a tumult of confusion.

'_It's Kaoru… isn't it? She's just a friend… just some chick… the one I always tease about not being… attractive enough, or being too fat or something… or out of tune when she sings… or stupid or something,' _he thought with a frown that his nerves, dulled by the numbing essence of Vodka, could not transfer fully to his brow. Lacking all the world's balance, he stumbled to the point that the only way to stay on his feet was to press his face firmly into her chest. "Great… that's just fucking great," he grumbled to himself, when he felt soft cleavage against his forehead. Even in his state, he realized the fire as it trailed over his bones to his chest, directly to his throbbing heart. "Oh god," he mumbled against her idle ribs.

After fully assessing the situation, Kaoru couldn't help herself. She burst into laughter, and the fluttering movements of her chest only emphasized the softness that he'd rather not have to feel against his forehead. She slipped her hand beneath his arm to help him stand straight. "Work with me," she said, and she hauled him up with all the muscle in her slender arms, until his cheek was pressed into hers. He slipped and the flat hold he had on her hip turned into a strong grasp, while his only free hand wrapped around her waist, and he laughed with her, feeling her stomach muscles convulse against his shoulder. They thrust themselves together, and while it was for the sake of balance, they couldn't deny that it was as if their bodies had been fueled by their own, carnal desires.

He was breathing heavily by then. "Thanks," he mumbled sulkily, annoyed that he had to sacrifice his manly pride and let her do everything for him, and he used the rest of his remaining strength to slap a hand against the painted wood of the door, his muscles clenching down on his bones to gain steady ground, eyes squeezed shut at the challenge of the usually simple movement.

Blindly discovering leverage for his weight in his other leg, he settled himself into a better position and the words "Too much Vodka," slipped from his mouth. Their mouths were mere inches apart, and he knew it when she laughed softly and he unintentionally tasted the warmth and mint of her breath. He tried to straighten up, but it became impossible as his legs cooled and tingled and moulded, oozing, into the shape of the floor.

"Souji!" Kaoru gasped, trying to hold him up, but he stumbled backwards onto the carpet, and she followed close behind him.

She landed on his chest, faintly pressing the air from his lungs, but his reaction stated a far bigger crime. "Lose some weight, woman," he said overdramatically as he coughed.

"Get some muscle, dickwad," she said, voice customarily absent of anger. She was unable to stand without support and had to roll off of him, but as she propped herself up by her elbows to straighten, his arm came around her waist and held her down. With a small gasp, her muscles gave in to the force of his arms and she flopped against him.

"Don't move," he said, voice slurred.

She rested her head into the crook of his neck, engulfed in his body heat and fresh sweat and energy, and breathed in the scent of his lacoste cologne. "I could become addicted to your smell," she said dreamily.

"That's fine womenz, you can smell me whenever you want," he said.

So she pressed her face into his shirt, the cotten comforting her skin with the dry heat from his flesh, and she could barely conceal the delighted smile that he could feel against his collarbome.

"Listen," he whispered, placing a hand on the low-cut top's display of naked skin above her left breast, oblivious to the effort it took her to ignore the bombardment of unfamiliar emotion.

"Listen to what?" she asked, letting out a shuddering sigh at the feeling of his palms on such delicate skin.

"Even dudes like shepherds or guys who work in shops would be able to tell if they fucking listened," he said, beginning a drunken session of senseless droning. "Even desert men could tell… even a stupid doctor who knows, like, nothing or nothing about Womenz, would be able to tell."

"Soujirou," she said, one hand sliding up his ribs in a caress.

"OR, the schoolmasters. Fuckin CHRIST knows they all work and nothing else. That's why everybody's like… 'what the hell' when you see one of them in a store at the mall or something, buying underwear. I swear its like seeing monkeys use tools for the first time."

"Souji," she said, grabbing his shirt, the cotton warmer than she expected because it had been on his flesh.

"Or… I dunno… even anybody would know if they just listened…"

"Know what if they listened to what?" she whispered into his ear, almost teasingly, because she knew the sensation would discard any memory of the long and boring speech he wanted to make.

And it worked. Her hot breath tingled in his ear, and like a breath of fresh air, the heat travelled down his neck and shoulders… right to the place he really didn't want to go. His breathing slowed again, and self-amusement from his own words died away.

"It's broken," he murmured.

"What?" she asked slowly, so lethargic that even her voice struggled from her alcohol-thickened throat.

"This," he said. "I can feel it," he squeezed her flesh, devoid of the usual lust. "It's broken."

"No, silly," she said, smiling against his heartbeat. "It's fine."

"Damnit, womanz, it's broken, okay?"

She giggled. "It's not, my dear."

"Dear… DEAR? Who the hell am I, the grandma?" He lifted his head to look her in the eye, but only saw a mass of black hair bundled over her neck and her back.

She looked at him. "No…"

"Anywayz, shut up, womenz, and stop lying. I am not a wise old lady who sits in her rocking chair spitting out words of wisdom, and I am not an idiot. It's broken!"

"Why would it be broken?" She asked lazily, struggling to sit up, but he clamped his arms around her waist to trap her where she was. He was driven by his lack of clear thinking when he admitted to himself that he enjoyed the feeling of her body on his, and didn't want her to move away. This time their foreheads met, and she didn't bother considering the struggle it would take to move away.

She was painfully aware that something new was there now. His lips were full, and supple, and close by. Closer than in reach. Just a single movement and her tongue would be slick over his parted mouth, taste buds caressing every crease in his skin before finally dipping inside and thieving a taste of the warmth beneath.

He egged her on in his own mind, every body hair crying for her touch-the touch of some random friend of his (and why?)- while every nerve rippled with electricity and passion. His hands found their way down her back, over the sleek fabric of her tight-fitted top, until his fingertips first curled over the hem and brushed over her back. Soon, they were easing it up, his palms calling for more, demanding more. He felt the bumps of her spine and the muscles and the leanness and the beauty then, and all of it was within his reach, or more than that. She was in his embrace, his hands touching the very surface of what should have always been his. Their bodies fit together like puzzle pieces on a board of lovers or a board of life, and all of a sudden the mist that rose from his mind revealed something that… terrified him. He felt it as his thumb brushed over a mole on her left shoulder blade, a feeling of intense need and care, and deep, deep intimacy.

Every nerve he possessed had snapped into realization and covered it with the mist of stupidity, fighting against it like a stain on his father's best Turkish carpet that he wanted to cover with an armchair. It was something that existed, and always would, but out of sight would mean out of mind, and those who were ignorant to it would all remain in bliss.

She breathed her beautiful breath out onto his lips as he caressed her, both pairs of eyes closed, and he discovered every part of her that he had ever watched with admiration, and he discovered the flesh that was usually clothed and hidden from him with the pads of his fingers. It was more than he could have ever imagined, being this close to her-something that, due to her relationship with Amar, could never have been more than an afterthought- and while he didn't understand it, he could follow it so naturally it was as if destiny itself had laid the path before him.

She sighed then, body sinking into him, arms limp as they lazily clutched his ribs. Every muscle relaxed, and he could feel the tightened knots giving up the resistance, and somehow he knew that it was the first time the muscles beneath his palms had relaxed in, possibly, years.

He opened his eyes. They were looking straight at her closed lids, and her long, thick lashes. For a moment he did nothing but stare, a cold cut and dry observance of the glistening, fragile lids and the dense forest of thick, jet lashes, but the moment passed. The emotions came flooding back – he felt his desires become his needs, and he choked back on the rising and increasingly painful deprivation.

"Kaoru," he said, breath rebounding as it touched her lips.

Her lids lifted lazily, as if they'd just woken from slumber and returned to their only duty, and the blue irises that ringed black pupils emerged. "Yes?"

His fingers ran through her jet-black strands of hair and released them from their binding tie, letting the waterfall cascade freely down her back. His neck strained to lift his heavy head from the much smaller mass of dark brown, wavy, messy hair, and his lips lingered, only slightly touching hers, devoid of action. Eyes closed. Breath stopped. And she turned.

"Amar," she whispered, looking into his now open eyes.

He paused, finding his thoughts scrambled. "Amar…" he frowned. _Who's this Amar_, he asked himself. _What does he have that forbids her? What does he mean?_ Realization dawned after the split second of discovery and he nodded. "Yeah… that's exactly why it's broken."

She rose slightly, frowning with confusion even though she knew exactly what he meant. For a while she just stared down at him, and he stared sincerely up at her. She took in his soft, delicate face, the pointed chin and defined jaw line, and his more than attractive eyes, often hidden by a curtain of ragged, rich, dark brown hair.

'_How do you know that?' _She seemed to ask with her eyes. _'How can a person like you… understand so well? And how can a person like you see and know this truth better than I ever could?'_

She pushed off of him. This time, he didn't stop her. Whatever had just happened, it was clearly over.

"I don't understand how a bottle of stupid stuff can make me so stupid," Kaoru slurred in an attempt to bring the subject back to more brainless and wasted topic. When she stumbled to her feet and reached blindly for her bed, she realized that all the alcohol in her stomach was now in her blood. The room was much more rounded than she remembered, and her vision was much more blurred. Soujirou followed suit and grabbed her by the waist to help her clamber onto the huge bed.

She let out a long sigh of relief when she'd flopped onto the feather-soft bed and sank into the duvet. "One day," she began, between heavy breaths, "I have to get a ladder so I can climb onto this bed in peace."

He laughed. "I totally agree, woman, who told your damn parents to make the top of this bed four feet off the ground?"

"I'm an untouched virgin princess so I have to sleep like one," she announced in an unnaturally high, mocking, bitter tone.

"Hahahaha! Princess my ass!" he teased as he flopped down next to her.

They had returned fully to the position they were in when Misao stormed irritably from the room. He opened his arms and she cuddled into him, even though they knew how wrong it was. They barely had a choice, because the air conditioner had no mercy on their dampened clothes. She was just about to comment on how stupid it was of Misao to throw cold water on her bed, and on them, for the sake of sobriety and righteousness and physical distance, when the door opened, and in came Misao. Their eyes were closed and they were as close as they could get, and both looked annoyingly like newlyweds about to _really_ tie the knot. She acknowledged it out loud and only then did Kaoru open her eyes, look over Soujirou's shoulder, and saw her best friend, hands on her hips, glaring bloody murder at her.

"That's it," she said as she walked towards them. "Soujirou, we're going now, kay? Get your stuff."

For the fun of annoying Misao, they released any efforts to stay normal and serious and receded into the blubbering idiots they were supposed to be. "Nooooo! He can't survive in a taxi," Kaoru moaned, wrapping her arms more securely around him.

"Yeah well that'll have to do," Misao said. "And let go of him, Kaoru. You have a boyfriend already."

"No…" Soujirou said. "She doesn't… she has nothing like it."

"Yeah," she said, "and besides, he'll never know."

Misao's anger enflamed them when they pulled closer together, into each other's warmth.

"Whatever happened to your car, woman?" He asked, resisting her efforts.

"It's in service, you idiot," Misao growled, and she forced him from the bed while the two drunkards grasped blindly for each other.

"Where's my teddy bear?" Kaoru whined, letting her arms flop onto the mattress.

"Where's my bottle of perfume?" He asked, reaching out for her.

"Sou, stand up," Misao demanded.

"I don't wanna stand," he declared like a two year old as he leaned over the bed to grasp his friend by the hand.

"Well tough!" she said. "You have to!"

Kaoru pouted stubbornly at the green-eyed girl. "Why do you wanna leave so fast? You don't love me anymore?" She folded her arms and glared at her.

"Oh, shut up. We're leaving because I'm not spending the rest of the night pulling you two apart!"

They fell quiet for a moment, remembering the state they were in just ten minutes ago, when Kaoru and Soujirou had lost all self control and either slipped off the bed, landing hard on their backsides and whining for help, or pulled together and snuggled like Po and Lala on the TellieTubbies. Misao had gone around and around the bed, from one side to the other, to keep one from falling and straighten out the other's legs, or sit on the bed with them and prevent them from doing things they shouldn't.

"What are you, a NURSE?" Soujirou had asked obnoxiously, his teeth bared like a disgusted five year old, as Kaoru curled up in stupefied laughter beside him.

"Yes," she said flatly, "So do what i fucking tell you to."

Then, of course, after throwing up the pink liquor all over the floor, Misao had had to deal with Soujirou's sudden obsession with breasts.

"Can I poke yours?" he would ask Kaoru, turning onto his side on the bed, arching his neck, and looking innocently up at her.

"Yes, please," she'd said, and she giggled as he prodded them, chanting 'poke, poke, poke.'

And when Misao had decided to intervene, he'd begun a whining fit that ended in a simple question.

"Can I poke yours instead?"

"Yes," she had absently permitted, as she straightened Kaoru's arms and pulled one of her legs back onto the bed when it began to slip over the edge.

"Great!" He had smiled, and as he jabbed at her chest with both hands, he'd chanted: "poke, poke, pokepoke, poke, pokepokepoke!"

Misao stood, one hand on her hip, as she watched the two blush slightly at the memory of what they'd done when the intoxication was at its peak. "Remember?" she pushed self-righteously.

"Well, yeah, but, uh, no, that doesn't count, woman, I have the right to be an idiot because I took that extra shot and threw it up again, okay?" Soujirou attempted to justify, but it was obvious that he failed when Misao's face turned red with impatience and anger.

After much prodding, pulling, and arguing (not to ignore the drunken remarks in the midst of the chaos), Kaoru was lying on her large bed in her teal and coral colored room, propped up on the pillows, still in her tight fitted clothes as she watched them walk through the double doors to the hallway and begin a route through the maze that was the expanse of her multi-storey apartment. She lay still, staring at the carvings of old Cairo on the ceiling as she heard their footsteps disappear into the midst of the house, and waited the forty or so seconds it took for her to hear their voices from the open window as they walked from the open foyer to the front gate.

"Sou, shut up and come on."

"I don't trust you," he said in his artificial jokers voice. "Shoulda trust yuh? You gonna take me in a taxi an leave meh in a dump somewhere, ain't ya, woman?"

"No, I'm not!"

"I wanna stay here," he said, "tha bed is all comfy and it was warm."

"It was warm because you were holding another person, you idiot."

"Yeah but… oh, so if I do this I'll get warm too! See, this house got everything to keep peopulz warm."

"Sou, stop hugging the pillar and let's GO!"

He whined more, and Kaoru heard the gate click open and heard them pull it shut.

She listened further, and became irresistibly curious to the reaction Soujirou would have to the rumbling engines of a lorry coming from somewhere outside. The sound became constant as the vehicle lingered in its place, and she waited, smile locked in place, for him to start again.

"Misao, look… oh my god LOOK! There's a lorry with a pictah of a MILK bottle on it!" He said in a hushed tone. "I bet there's cows in there!"

Kaoru trembled with self-indulgent laughter as she enjoyed the sound bytes coming from outside.

"HEY! Dude who's getting out of the Cow-Truck! I need some milk over here! Get me a bucket and I'll milk a cow for free! Hey! HEYY! Don't run off! Come baaaack!"

Kaoru shoved her face into a pillow and laughed insanely as she listened to Misao's furious scolding.

"If you yell at the fucking milkman ONE more time, Sou, I'm gonna take my heels off and poke your eyes out with them!"

"Fuck you, you COW! You're just jealous as fuck cause you don't have four tits that spray milk!"

"You're a little dick, mother fucker!"

"Why yes, I did fuck your mother, and I liked it too!"

Their voices disappeared as they proceeded down the road, and when they were gone, Kaoru hauled herself up, blinked several times to look past the drunk-glasses and see clearly. She looked about herself, from the darkened patches on the duvet where water had been thrown, to the curtains that had been hauled open and twirled up and tied into bows, to the items of clothing thrown all over the floor, and something caught the light on the floor beside her bed. She had to lean right over to reach it because the mattress was so high, and she held the cool metal plates in her palm.

It was Soujirou's Rolex watch, silver and sleek with a dark face and gold watch hands and cubic zirconium studding every number for every hour. She observed the scratches on the surface and the fingerprints on the inside for a long time, and eventually closed her fingers over it, holding it to her heart as if his hand was there again, telling her 'It's broken.'


	2. Chap 1: Status Quo

Chapter one redone to match my new changes. I hope you guys approve.

I would like to mention, because some of you may be wandering what happened to Kenshin, that he didn't quite match the asshole Arab guy thing. (I know I sound incredibly racist when I say it, but trust me, I've lived through it, I've seen it, and though I didn't have to suffer for it quite as much as the local ladies I know, I can't leave my house without being harassed by 20 people at once – and that's only in terms of acquaintances. My boyfriend is Egyptian, and he, as well as women with more experience than I have, trained warnings of their nature into my head. Its almost as if it's in the blood. Even an Irish-Egyptian guy I met couldn't get that asshole gene out of his system and gave me a hugely hard time because of it. Cairo has its fair share of decent people, but more often than not we get the bad end of the stick. If it bothers you, please let me know and I'll tone it down as much as necessary.)

Don't worry about Kenshin though, because I have reserved for him, from the start of chapter 8, another major, very sexy, very badass and very sweet role in Kaoru's life.

Chapter One

Status Quo

It wasn't the strong wind that day that irritated her as it poured over the earth in its strong and discomforting wave of power. Her jet-black hair whipped viciously through the air around her, as if reacting to her own fury and deciphering the inner turmoil that was her stressed mind.

Her voice was steady, head reeling with the pressure of the yelling beside her, yet she walked at a regular pace, seemingly untouched by the rage of the wind around them. God, it was irritating. She was completely aware that while she walked home, tailed by an unrestrained idiot in need of anger management, people would stop in their tracks on the street, hold their hair from their faces, and watch.

Her path passed a cherry tree that seemed caught in the stillness of a heavy, quiet, peaceful day, and it was rattled of its light pink blossoms so that they showered over her below. Anybody without the rationale of a regular person would have sworn it was her and her silent rage that had caused it, wind be damned.. As she continued, steady, slow, silent, she was almost unmoved by the wind as well as unaffected by its force. The waves were the wind, and she was its core, providing the turning circle of vehemence inside.

More people looked up as the voice continued, finding the sight far more amusing than the pavement underneath their rushing feet. It could have been that… and it could have been that she was beautiful.

But that paid her no mind. She instead let a small smirk curve the left corner of her mouth. 'Yes,' she whispered inside, 'it is definitely not the wind that's pissing me off.'

"What is it, then? Why the fuck should you be mad at me?" he growled, glaring at her with his intimidating eyes, "What you've been doing is utterly wrong, and you know that women who behave as you do are absolutely worthless in our society! Is that really so hard to understand?"

The rage bubbled beneath her bones, and she felt it rise like a poison. "Understanding that you're asking something ridiculous of me isn't actually all that hard. I get it." she stared at the world around her, not even hearing her Amar at times because she was just so angered by his voice alone.

"You know exactly what I mean! I am asking you to be a respectable female, and I am telling you that I'll not tolerate this bullshit! Drinking, partying, staying out late? And the kind of things you wear? You are damn lucky I haven't put you in your place!"

"You're not making any sense," she said matter-of-factly. "I'm sixteen, and we're in London! Why don't you do the favour this time and respect where I'm from?"

"I know exactly where you're from, and that is a high-society Arabian family! Maybe you should start acting like it instead of any one of those wanton women on the street!"

Kaoru stopped where she was. How many times had she heard the same from her parents, from her caretaker, from her aunties and uncles? How many more times would she have to tolerate it? She placed a hand on her hip and turned towards him, eyes narrowed. "Do I look like an Arab to you?"

He fell quiet for a moment. No, she didn't. Those long, wide blue eyes, those smooth cheekbones, that straight, straight hair… it was something he'd always asked himself. Does she look like a Kahira? No, she doesn't. But there's no doubt in anybody's minds that she is.

"Maybe you should remember, my dear Amar, that we live in a free society, high or low or middle. And you should remember what that means," she said coldly. He could have sworn from those glaring daggers that her eyes had turned a steely grey.

"No, I have no idea what the hell that means," he said sarcastically. "Why don't you enlighten me?"

"It means, I am my own person, I belong to no one, I obey no one, I know who I am and you have absolutely no right to control what I'm doing, as long as nobody's getting hurt."

"Your behaviour is damage to my honour! Can't you fucking see that?" His yell was so loud and so fiercely directed at her that several more heads looked up, searching for the source of such a disturbance in the daily peace.

She endured his yells even though the last line felt like it hit a spark inside her. Instead she breathed, as calmly as she could, while he scolded her and irritated her and publicly humiliated her and she had to be the obedient girlfriend and accept it with a lowered head.

By the time they got to her large front gates and she pushed inside, the fact that he followed her was enough to make her seriously question her levels of self-control.

"You know deep down that you have no right to be mad with me, the way you are now," he continued, merciless to the beauty of silence.

"I know that I have an animal right to my freedom," she said, arching an eyebrow. "And nothing will get in the way of that. I have absolutely no reason to look at you as if I'm scared to be found out. My way of life is about letting loose and enjoying it, and I know you won't understand in a million years. So lets leave it alone. I'm not hurting anyone – not myself, not my friends, not you."

"Oh, and what about my –"

"Okay, for one day just fuck your honor," she said, calmly cutting him off. "Do you think anyone gives a shit about your honor? We are in London. There is no such thing as impersonal honor."

"I can't sleep at night on the weekends knowing you're off spending the night with Soujirou and a bottle of vodka and that slut friend of yours, donning mini skirts and bullshit!"

"Wait. Say that again. A bottle of vodka and what?" Kaoru was getting ready for her classic, slow-starting, surprise explosion.

"I said it once and I'll say it again. That slut friend of yours!"

"What the fuck makes you say that? What makes her a slut?" she demanded, eyes narrowed and lips flattened into a line.

"You see the things she wears n the swiftness of her changing boyfriends, and her fickle feelings and her loudness and the way she behaves as if we're living in Amsterdam, for sure that's wrong!"

"Oh, yeah, okay, Amar, maybe you do make sense but… has it ever occurred to you that you do the exact same thing?"

"What the hell are you talking about, I am not the same as her!"

"You are loud and obnoxious with your friends, you drink, you smoke, you hang out late taking god knows what, you can't help your wandering eye and I know it, whether you realized it or not, I am completely aware of the way you look at other women. We're all just walking pussies, aren't we?"

"It's totally different for me! You are emotional, weak, and defective. You are women."

She stopped in the doorway, afraid that he'd follow her inside. "We are women?" she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and continued. "Emotional, weak, and defective?"

"Well yes, of course," he said, shrugging, as if it was the simplest piece of information in the world.

"What makes you say that?"

"PMS and physical strength makes me say that," he said. "You have minds that are built for handling children, nothing more. This is a biological fact. Studies consistently show it."

"Oh, yeah, yeah, you mean your muslim studies show it," she said obnoxiously.

"Muslim studies – the most accurate ever created. The words of our prophet confirm it," he said, "and you know it."

Kaoru's hand, for a fourth time during this infuriating confrontation, had found her hip. "Give me a challenge and I'll follow through. Give me someone to heal, and I'll heal them. Give me a war and I will fucking survive it. Give me challenges and pain and neglect and torture, and I will get through it all with flying fucking colors, my dear groom. And I will do it all before you even get close."

He looked into her eyes, making the six inches of height he had on her feel more like six feet. It was a condescending, disgusted look. The look of a man to his inferior, second-class extension of a mate.

And then the fighting began. He raged at her like an open fire and she resisted like ice at impossible temperatures. And she looked at him as he screamed at her, about modesty and chastity and a woman's worth and whatever else his closed-up mind could come up with, and felt nothing but an intense disgust towards the one she'd spent almost a year of her life with, loving and cherishing and enjoying and pleasuring. Now, all she wanted was out.

"Just stop what you're doing! You are female. You should be chaste, you should be quiet, you should be modest, you should throw out all those fucking short skirts! Is it really so hard to be what you were made to be?" His face was tainted red from how high he'd raised his voice. The front doors clicked open, but she paused, half out of pure rage and half because she feared he would follow her into the house if she entered.

"Amar…" she said, her voice still revolving around calm, icy accusation, "do you feel better, forcing your control onto somebody else?" she stepped up into the doorframe of the house, so that she was slightly taller than him, the sheer size of the front room expanding behind her, yet the chance that he'd follow her in kept her from proceeding further into the house."Do you feel like a man now?"

"Do you think I need to yell at you to be a man, Kaoru?"

She took another deep breath to steady her voice, which she knew could easily begin to shake with anger. "I'm your fiancé, aren't I? You have no right to tell me what I should and should not be – that is fucking bullshit. I was not born to fill a role of submission and silence. And if you loved me as you used to claim, you would not ask me to be anything but myself."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he hissed, and when Aly emerged, the spoiled, overprotective and energetic young boy that he was, Kaoru tried to smile reassuringly at her kid brother. Amar ignored him.

"Did you hear me?" He asked. "Jesus, are you deaf?"

"Yes, I fucking heard you," she said in a low voice to keep the ten year old from hearing too much.

"So then what were you talking about?"

"You're the fucking slut-whore here, and I will have nothing to do with you if you continue to be like this. I have more power than you'd expect me to."

The words of rebellion had really tweaked his nerve. And he grasped her shoulders and shoved her into the door frame, to get his message inside her head, to get her to understand – and to put her in her place. "Listen to me!"

Aly watched wide-eyed as his older sister winced in reaction to the sudden onslaught of power. Kaoru had always been strong willed and full of authority. Now this man was getting into his sister's space.

"Hey!" He growled, shoving at the young man and not succeeding, because he was half the size of this imposter. "Nobody touches my sister!"

"Shut the hell up, Aly, this has nothing to do with you!"

Aly grasped his arm, pulled it from Kaoru's shoulder and sank his teeth into the flesh.

"Fuck!" he hissed, and his hand swiped across the boy's face.

"Hey!" she growled, grasping his arm and pushing him back. "Don't you fucking touch him!"

"Kaoru, get the hell off of me!"

Aly ran at Amar and slammed his lowered head into his stomach. "Get the hell out of our house, you stupid excuse for a man!"

Amar gave him one hard look, his arm hooked around his stomach, and in a second he was on the violent brat.

"Hey!" Kaoru yelled, grabbing him and trying to pull him away from him. "Amar! He's just a kid!"

"A fucking brat, a devil's child, not a kid!" He hissed, one hand clamped in his head of hair.

"Amar, get off of him. NOW."

He wouldn't listen. He tried to fight her off, but as soon as he let go of Aly's hair, he ran at him with fingernails, teeth, feet and knees to cause as much damage his small size would allow.

"Amar!" Kaoru yelled frantically as she tried to get between the two. "Amar! He's a ten year old boy!"

She shoved herself between the two bodies, her arms outstretched to keep them apart.

"What are you doing, sis, this jackass needs to go down!" Aly growled, teeth bared.

"No, Aly, just go upstairs okay, I'll handle this!"

"He pushed you into the doorframe! He's yelling at you! Anyone back home would do the same for his sister!"

"I know that," she argued as she tried to restrain the two.

"It's not fair!" He growled. "You asshole!" He cussed towards Amar from behind his sister,

"Aly, don't use words like that! Amar, get the hell away from my brother, he's half your size and he's doing what he was raised to do."

"I don't give a fuck, his teeth broke through the skin!"

"Oh, be a fucking man, Amar! A bit of blood and you're gonna wreak havoc on a little kid?"

"I am not little! Now let me get at him!" Aly cried, trying to push past his stronger sister's defences.

"No! Ok, both of you shut the hell up, or I'm calling security!" she screamed.

They both fell still. They knew what she meant – the security would haul Amar through the front gates, inform the caretaker, and the caretaker would call the parents.

She sighed a long breath of relief, her arms slowly relaxing from their grips on the two respectively fired-up males.

"I swear," she said, "you have to grow some balls," she said to Amar, "and you have to lose some," she said to Aly.

Aly smiled a little when she said it. That's why he loved her – she was vicious.

"Don't you fucking say that to me, Kaoru," Amar growled, "who do you think you are?"

"I know who I am," she said.

"You're making a big mistake talking to me like that. Women are supposed to be reserved and polite."

She laughed sarcastically as she wiped the sweat from her forehead. "See, that's my mistake, Amar… I swear I should have seen this coming.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he hissed.

"I'm talking about deciding to commit myself to a fucking Arab," she said, that hateful glare coloring her eyes as the dark sarcasm colored her voice. She knew it would piss him off, and she liked it.

And the second she said it, his eyes widened with rage, he raised his hand, and he slapped her hard in the face. The last thing she saw before the split second of black was his face, his dark eyes, his broad jaw, his pointed nose and his arched brows, contemptuous, and his teeth, bared with rage.

"That's it!" Aly said, running past her, "I'm gonna kill you!"

"Aly!" Kaoru cried, "Aly!" she pulled him back and held him against her, both arms locked around his shoulders.

"What?" he yelled, panting with rage.

"Go inside, okay?"

"But he –"

"I don't care!" She said, cutting him off. "I can handle this okay, just go upstairs!"

"No!"

"Go upstairs!"

He looked into her eyes. She was stern and she wouldn't let him have it. Sighing angrily, he pulled out of her arms and stormed into the living room.

"This could all have been avoided if you were more disciplined," he said condescendingly. "You have no idea how low you are falling."

"Amar!" She growled, confident that she would not take any more of it, "Don't you dare. Okay? Don't talk to me like that. Don't push me around."

"I told you before," he said, motioning to her cheek, "I told you, you were lucky I haven't put you in your place."

He pulled away and she furiously cupped her swelling cheek in the palm of her hand. Her anger was flowing as wildly as her hair blew in the wind that penetrated the gates. "Don't start," she demanded, her tone low. "There's no point in starting anymore. I'm done with you."

"You think your parents are gonna be happy about that?"

"I could give a fuck what my parents think! The engagement is off! There's no way I'm marrying you. I don't care how damn conventional they are – I'm not marrying you."

"Like you'll ever find anybody with the cash I have, and the houses I have, and the job that's waiting for me," he said obnoxiously.

"I have my own cash. I have my own education. I don't need you."

"Sure you don't," he said. "You're fucking beautiful but do you think anybody will put up with such an unrestrained woman?"

"Anybody that isn't Arab," she said with equal malevolence, and as bad as she knew it sounded, she meant it. "I'm well aware that the second I marry you you'll have me in a veil, have me stuck in the house, have me out of sight of any man there is, and my only job will be to respond when I'm called to bed, and sit still and quiet next to you wherever you go, whatever the time is."

"What the hell are you saying?"

"You think I don't know? I know! You're trying to keep me away from my best friends because they're a bunch of goddamned guys! You're trying to keep me away from Misao because you know she's so adventurous and modern! You're constantly arguing about what I wear! Every morning I wake up I have to pick something that covers enough skin to keep you from throwing a goddamned tantrum! You can't do it all now – but the second we marry you will. So I'm done here – I'm not marrying you. I'm not putting up with you. I'm done."

He realized that he could not afford to be power hungry with her, and switched into a completely different persona – one of gentleness and soppiness – that used to have an effect on her, but now, only repulsed her further. He proceeded with the 'I love you,' the 'I didn't mean it,' the 'I need you,' and the 'I'm so sorry,' sound bytes, sweet talking her to no end. He tried to grab her hand but she recoiled, whispered "I really do love you," into her ear while almost forcefully holding her in place with a hand on her shoulder, and that mere touch made her want to incinerate him.

She pushed away, not saying goodbye, and slammed the front doors. Aly watched, frozen in the archway to the reception room, as Kaoru pressed her back flat against the door and tried to bring her breathing to a normal pace. And as he banged and kicked on the door, screaming that he would not be ignored like that, she closed her eyes and sighed.

Kaoru knew she should have been crying. This was a long term, serious relationship being flushed into non-existence and havoc. It was important… it was a part of her. So why were her eyes dry? Why was she instead trembling with anger? Why was her heart, usually full of love, drowning in disgust and repulsion? She opened her eyes and saw her brother, standing in the foyer, eyes narrowed as if he was ready to run outside and silence the guy who now banged insistently on her door.

"I'm sorry, Aly," she said.

"What was that all about? Damn idiot thinks he can hit you and I don't get to do anything?" he asked insistently, his hands curled into fists at his sides.

"Because he's a self-centered moron," she said, patting his back, "he's not gonna care if you fuck him up. He'll just do the same to you. And don't lie to yourself – he's bigger and stronger and much more of an ass than you are. Leave it alone for now."

"I don't care how much bigger or stronger he is, I can still fuck him!"

"Didn't I tell you not to use words like that?" she said, eyes narrowed and one eyebrow arched.

"Nobody cares," he said. "Besides, I like them."

She scoffed, smirked, and pinched his cheek.

"Miss Kaoru," she heard a heavily Egyptian accent from behind and knew it was the caretaker – and if he was talking to her, it was always bad news.

"What is it, Naguib?" she asked, sighing heavily as she stood to face him.

Aly stepped cautiously behind her, watching the conversation with a nervousness that always hit them when he spoke.

"If you've just broken off the engagement, I'll have to let your parents know."

Kaoru massaged the bridge of her nose with her thumb and her index finger, thinking with a wince of the scenario this would create. "I know," she said in a low tone.

"I'm sorry."

She released Aly from her arms and stood, her head ringing.

"Kaoru," he said, tugging on her arm.

She looked down at him, observing the almond-brown eyes of her father, fitting perfectly into his face. He was what any Saudi-Egyptian boy would be – glowing with his alabaster skin, his thick, black lashes batting over round, pale-brown eyes, back always arched with the illusion of strength, jaw hardened with defiance, all piecing together into a mix of both their parents that Kaoru was not a part of, and never would be. But he had a bubbly, comedic, life-loving vibe that could only have been rubbed onto him by ten years spent sharing his house with Kaoru.

Had they been living in Egypt, he would already have started to adopt more than just this extreme sense of protection over her. Not wanting to think of how their relationship would suffer in such a close-minded environment, she let out a simple sigh of gratifying relief, that they had grown up here and that she could teach him about real respect, as well as gender equity, without the interruptions of the parents and the people around them.

"What is it?" she asked, smiling down at him.

"My friends all have crushes on you. I think they must be blind," he teased, and Kaoru's eyes widened with mock offense.

"Watch your tongue and mind your manners, I did not train all that bull about respect into your head so you could stand around insulting me," she said, giggling as she poked his ribs.

He screeched as she proceeded to tickle him, and he ran halfway across the drawing room to avoid her. "Is Soujirou coming over today?" he asked her.

"No, Aly, but he's going to pick me up, if you want to say hello to him," she said.

"And by the way," he said, stopping at the 15 foot archway to the winding staircase tower, "don't feel bad. I never liked Amar anyways," he smiled cheekily at her.

"Then I have taught you well," she announced proudly. She giggled a little and waved him off, to make her way through the rest of the house.

She wandered past the pillars that held up the high, tall ceiling, exited the foyer and entered the huge ring of rooms that centered the round courtyard in the middle. Her eyes were trained on the fountain.

It was a beautiful house and she knew it. Everybody who entered had commented on its beauty, its atmosphere, the ambiance of an almost underwater world with the bluish stone walls, the grey marble of the floors, the swirling myriad of ornaments and glass and gentle lighting. But she resented it. She had grown accustomed to the maids that often lined up at the door to greet her, ever since she moved from the Bath boarding school to the family's London home. She had also grown accustomed to having people ask her to walk more elegantly through it, and now strode gracefully through her family's materialized wealth.

She had grown accustomed to wrapping herself in black, a few blocks from her house, and making a grand performance of walking into the house and relieving herself of the headscarf and the burkah, as if she'd worn it all day in the heat, to please her parents and keep them from finding another reason to strangle her.

"You were born into privilege," they always told her, even though she knew privilege had nothing to do with her birth, "and you have obligations as the daughter of this house." She was nearly seventeen, truly an eligible age. She supposed it was a cultural thing, that they were so eager to marry her to a family with wealth that was equal to theirs – but it was something that only she would have to suffer for. Goddamned suitors… she was absolutely certain that whenever she got married, it would be to a man as conservative and backward as her father. Amar may actually have been lenient compared to the others that she knew she would find, now that this relationship was over.

She often wondered what her life would be like if she'd never been adopted. Though nobody had ever spoken of it, her face wasn't even touched with Egyptian features. Nobody in her family could have been responsible for those long, wide, strikingly blue eyes, or her creamy skin, or her defined shape and lack of height. Would she be free, normal, non denominated, with loving parents that were always present? She was fully aware of how ridiculously privileged she was, but… she sighed hard. Why dream if dreams don't come true? She'd been raised here in London, socialized with English kids, and when they sent her to a boarding school in Bath, her entire life was modern and her mentality had no relation at all to that of her parents. She expected from them what she'd seen from the parents of others - the bedtime kisses, the affection, the jokes and the laughter and the feeling that no matter what they got themselves into, their parents would always be there to bail them out. It was something she would never have, and that's why it was so hard.

The fountain in the middle of the courtyard was lit only by a beam of the setting sunlight that slipped over the top of the third floor roofing. It shot straight through the quelling surface and her eyes would not leave it as she approached the ornamental water feature and sat on the edge, hearing the water trickle over pathways of stone and find their way to the pool of water below. The fountain was huge, taking up half of the courtyard, and it went at least thirteen feet deep. How they accommodated such a thing in this kind of penthouse apartment, she had no idea. But in the palm of her hand now rested a ring of silver and zirconium, pulled from its usual place on her wedding finger.

The plan was to replace this ring with a real one, by the time school was over and he was ready for university. The plan was to fly them both to Cairo for a massive engagement with family and friends and belly dancers and live oriental bands and 10-foot chocolate fountains and gold-plated cutlery and five-star food at a five-star hotel ballroom. The ring would be pink and yellow gold, a ten karat diamond on the top. The crowds would cheer at the bind of the two youngsters, and dance, and compliment him on his good taste of women, and compliment her on the face she had done nothing to deserve or acquire, and they would dance and dance while she silently lamented her life's end. But things didn't always go as planned, and during times like these there was basically nothing that could mend the broken bond.

"Not anymore," she murmured to herself.

Her hand plunged beneath the surface and released the ring into the water, and she watched it drift to the bottom, ebbing in and out of the ray of light until it rested peacefully in the center of the ray on the stone bed of the pond.

As her hand slipped out of the water, she watched the moisture fall, drip by drip, from her pale skin. The whole world was silent save the constant drip of water-even the singing birds seemed to hold their breaths.

"It's broken…" she whispered, eyes clouded with reminiscence. "Anyone could see… it's broken."

.....................................................................

She came to the private school in central London just over a year ago. She was purely Bath, purely boarding school, with both a past and a reputation to leave in the darkness, so a new start sounded very appealing at the time. After an incident at the boarding school, her parents realized that her hymen was at stake and decided that moving her to the family house, where she'd be under the eye of a watchful caretaker, was much better. Her parents spent most of their time at home in Egypt, taking care of the oil wells, watching over the way it was drilled and used and making sure they got their fair share of cash – not that it mattered. They were already saturated in old money. They'd only kept Kaoru in London because she would appear much more cultured to whichever suitor they had to offer. Not only that, but they had a hidden interest in the wealthy son, Amar, of a Saudi Arabian family.

Kaoru glared towards the floor. She remembered how it had been in the beginning, when she found that he was in every one of her classes, and constantly charmed and pursued her. She went along with it because his charm appealed her and his intelligence appealed her and he had an air of dignity - and if it wasn't that, it was his broad, smooth, alabaster shoulders and his adequately muscled chest, and his slim hips, and his long lashes, and his beautiful face that had attracted her so deeply. Even with the physical attraction that they both shared for one another, it had always been innocent – he wouldn't dare deepen their shallow kisses, or lift her shirt over her head to see what was underneath it. There was always a 'wait until marriage, its not too far away,' feel about things, whenever she became frustrated and tried to coax him into going further. Whenever she asked him why, he would say:

"A man of my origin will never marry a woman he has slept with before, whether it was her first time or not. I have done things before and I plan to marry you, so I won't do them with you."

Kaoru rolled her eyes as she remembered all the little warning signs she'd so stupidly failed to notice. She could almost hear his parent's motivating voices in her head, whenever he'd taken a step further with her. There had been no grand proposal – their futures had been set by their parents from the moment Kaoru stepped through the front doors of the private school.

And now, she'd just fucked it all up.

"Miss Kamiya," she heard a voice from behind. She turned and saw one of the caretakers through the now open glass door.

"Yes?" She tidied her face and stood from the edge of the fountain.

"Your friend, Soujirou Seta, just called to tell you that he'll be here with the car in ten minutes."

Kaoru thanked her and suddenly remembered what she was wearing. She looked down at the wide-leg jeans and the thin cashmere, sleeveless turtleneck that she'd ironically picked out that morning to avoid any Amar-tantrums. This was not who she was. There was no relief greater than what she felt, when she knew that it was time to pull it all off and slip into something more liberating. With Misao and Soujirou, there was no reason to be anything but herself. The ring at the bottom of the pond was both out of sight and out of mind when she rushed up the stairs to the second floor, and to her waiting bedroom.

....................................................................

Soujirou closed his cellular with a single click and placed it back inside the glove compartment. The road to her apartment – a road he had taken countless times in his cobalt-blue range rover – was inexcusably busy that day, giving a whole new meaning to downtown traffic issues. He didn't bother beeping the horn even though he held some strange adoration for it's crazy howl, because he knew it would gain him nothing more than at least five 'fuck you' flip-offs from the fellow drivers and it wouldn't help the pile of cars trying to proceed down the highway. It was the damned wind, slowing people down as the rage of air in travel knocked garbage bins and newly planted saplings onto the road, requiring almost impossibly constant clearage for the cars on the road to really function.

"Damnit," he growled. "This stupid little mini hurricane sucks fucking ass."

_It may take more than ten minutes,_ he texted her,_ I'm in traffic_ -.-

He stepped on the acceleration to make that small two-foot advance on the road, and felt boredom completely override his childish mind. As his random, often empty psyche wandered to palm trees and ice cream, he lost track of the minute and a half that passed, and almost leapt from his seat when the cellular buzzed in the glove compartment. A smile brightened his boyish, attractive face, hidden mostly by the ragged, messy brown hair, when he saw her text message.

_Traffic, huh? I bet it's the wind. It definitely looks like it from my bedroom window. But it's okay… I'm still running around finding clothes to put on so I'm not really complaining about the added time… no doubt you are though ;) ring the buzzer when you arrive and I'll be down in a second._

He sighed hard and shoved the cell phone into his pocket instead. "Thanks…" he droned. "My mind is now full of unwanted images… so yeah, thanks a fucking load, Kaoru, for putting them there."

But he knew it wasn't her fault… he was the one with the overactive mind that thought lustfully of Kaoru and her fine body and her lovely smile as soon as any mention of putting on clothes occurred. And if it wasn't her body to dream of it was her face. No girl he'd ever befriended could hold even a candle to Kaoru and her smile, and the messy, somewhat gothic bangs that framed her pale, golden face, and the full, pink lips, and the eyes that shone like the sapphires on her birth ring. He sighed even harder, impatient to push away all admirable thoughts, cursing her for being enough to induce such things in him. But he knew… yeah, yeah, he knew it wasn't her fault at all. He just needed to do some mental-training and meditation to keep his body more thoroughly under control. It would save him from ruining the closeness in his threesome.

He felt a smile touch his lips at the notion – and it was a real, genuine smile that occurred below his ubiquitous mask. His two favourite ladies, he thought proudly. Misao and Kaoru were the reason he even bothered studying on a Friday afternoon so that he could spend the night getting wasted and dazed with the two females who were most prominent in his teenage life. He knew many other guys would have killed to be in his position – it was a known fact imprinted in his brain – but he was never really all that aware of how fortunate it made him and how special it made them. He supposed he took them slightly more for granted than he should have. With both of his ladies claimed by other men, no romance or love ever touched the irreplaceably strong bonds between them all. Not until… Friday night.

God, could he ever forget the way they'd battled against Misao, just to get into each other's arms? Could he ever forget the way Kaoru wrapped her arms around him as he leaned over the sink to wash the vomited vodka from his mouth? Could he ever forget how it felt to stumble drunkenly around the room with her, one finger trapped beneath her belt and one hand stuck to her hip? He remembered every last detail of the night, even though they'd both assumed, in their stupidity, that they would have lost memory of it all by Saturday morning. Evidently, that hadn't happened. He remembered the feeling of her hip against his hand as she pressed her back against the door. He remembered oozing into the shape of the floor and bringing her unsteady frame with him. They had lain together… and she had been in his hands… her broken heart beating against his chest.

He covered his face in his hands, cursing loudly without worry of being heard. What had their friendship suddenly turned into? A game of love? If that was the case, then hell yeah, they were playing it, but they played it with averted eyes and quick, sinuous movements, as if trying to pretend there was no game at all.

"She's not even fucking single!" he growled.

_Not that it mattered…_ he thought to himself. _Isn't there a reason for her broken heart?_

He shook his head and looked out the window, suddenly seeing the tall, familiar building of high class, and he saw the huge, offset piece of apartment stuck to the left side of the building's first three floors, with the brass window frames and the dark green roof shingles, and the grand double gates leading up the walkway.

He'd almost overshot her. He could see her bedroom window from where he was, and imagined her inside, rushing to get ready, half dressed, hair tumbling over her shoulders… he quavered, slapping himself into reality, and swerved, much to the anger of the fellow drivers, towards the right.

He pressed the button, dying to find something to annoy her about, and he remembered her text message with a cynical grin. He pressed the button for the buzzer. "It's Soujirou here," he said into the speaker.

"Miss Kahira will be down in a moment," the housekeeper said politely into the receiver somewhere inside the foyer.

And so, the countdown began. He stared at the digital alarm clock on the iHome. 4:30 PM and 13 seconds. His eyes were trained on the seconds he had to count. He waited and waited. And at 4:31 and 25 seconds, the front doors opened and out stepped one of his two little ladies.

It was hard to disguise the refreshing relief when he saw what she wore as she stepped outside. She glowed, in her fitted black jeans and her very Chinese cheong-sam tank top, with the beautifully embroidered collar. It showed off the pale-gold color of her toned arms, and it fit around her waist as if it had been tailored with her exact body shape in mind. He had to admit how he adored it, when she looked this liberated and free. He had grown used to the weekly occasions, when she stepped outside, looking delicious and also looking like the weight of the world had slipped from her shoulders for the night. But it never got old, seeing such a thing after a week of watching her strained smiles, as she failed to hide the stress she was dealing with. He smiled one of the biggest smiles on his list of weekly grins, and remembered himself and the time on the digital clock.

Kaoru approached with light, airy footsteps, a smile on her face as she walked towards her weekly dose of freedom at its very beginning, and he watched her face change, trying to stifle laughter, when she pulled the door handle, and saw his plan come into action when the door wouldn't budge and Soujirou wouldn't acknowledge her.

He grinned cheekily, wishing he could see the look on her face, but remaining strong anyway. She stood at the window, hands on her hips, as he pretended she wasn't there, smirking, delighted that he had found yet another opportunity to piss her off.

She knocked on the window, eyebrow raised with sarcastic amusement.

He pulled the cellular from his pocket and found her text message, and rolled down the window so that she could hear him. "Ring the buzzer when you arrive and I'll be down in a second," he read out loud to her, and she folded her arms impatiently.

"I know what you're getting at, Souji." She smirked playfully.

"Yeah, sure you do. The fact is, it didn't take a single second for you to get down here. I had to wait for exactly eighty-two of them before you decided to show up."

She laughed a little. "You are the biggest doofus I've ever known, do you know that?"

"Course I do," he said, grinning brightly, "How many times would I have to hear your daily message, with different wording, to understand what you're trying to say?"

She laughed a little more. "So the doors are locked. You don't want me to accompany you tonight?"

He looked thoughtfully about himself. "Well… I didn't exactly say that, but now that you mention it, maybe it isn't such a bad idea," he jeered, pulling on the gear stick. But before he could even find the acceleration, she did exactly what he knew she would and pulled her entire, lean, long body through the open car window. He laughed and began driving when her legs, topped with stiletto heels, were only halfway through the window, but she knew it was all good fun and expertly hauled herself in, settling down into the right seating position while he sped down the opposite direction on the highway, thankful to be out of the traffic jam.

"Did you just invite yourself into mah car, woman?" He asked provocatively.

"Of course I did." She smiled sweetly.

"And what makes you think I'm all right with that?" He said, giving her the cocked eyebrow.

"The fact that I am so cute I can get whatever I want just by giving you the puppy-dog stare," she announced with faux pride.

He shook his head. "Nu-uh. No way. You're not _that_ fair."

"Are you challenging what Okita said about me today in the library, Mr. Seta?" she asked challengingly.

"I suppose I am. But that guy is messed up, woman. You know he'd find even a walrus attractive."

She glared at him, and as much as he wanted to see the cute little death stare she often pulled out of nowhere, he stayed strong and kept his eyes on the road.

And he smiled when it worked. She shrugged and returned to her regular, more reasonable self.

"I know why," she said, "for real. It's because tonight is my turn to pay for all the booze."

He smiled, bearing all his teeth in an effulgent smile. "Of course!"


	3. Chap 2: Chemistry

I'd like to think i did a good job touching up this chapter... i hope you think so, too. :D

Chapter Two

Chemistry

They could barely attempt to deny that there were a lot of strange noises around them today. The car engine itself was unbearably loud. People's voices and footsteps and the horns of other cars in the traffic were so unnaturally noticeable that Soujirou could barely concentrate and Kaoru could barely think about anything else.

Part of the problem was their refusal to ever play music during car trips together. They always had too much talking to do, to have music get in the way of their conversations. But today, there was no conversation. A little thing called silence, so awkward and such a rarity between the two, was thickening the air and making even the smallest movements impossible, lest they ruffle their clothes or clear their throats, or in any other way, awkwardly pierce the continuous hush.

The only silence that'd ever occurred between them was the type of silence induced by sleep, on nights when Kaoru and Soujirou were both too wasted to drive, and Misao was employed to take control of the cobalt-blue range rover and get everybody back to a randomly selected house for a good night's rest. The music would be gentle and the two would flop against the windows in the back seat, trying not to be sick, while their trustworthy, half-sober friend enjoyed the smooth drive through London. It was always easy, always relaxed, and all three were always content.

Today, however, there was no excuse for the silence, and there was definitely no excuse for the nervousness. Kaoru smoothed her hair or brushed it out of her face, perplexed, while Soujirou pouted at the discomfort of the situation and how deeply his ubiquitous humour had been defeated. Even he, whose lungs lacked the capacity to stay quiet, was too strained to speak.

Kaoru cleared her throat, her eyes trained to the world outside because it was the only view that wouldn't make her feel so trapped. Soujirou reached over to grasp the gear stick, and his hand briefly brushed against her bare arm. It was a mistake, but they both shivered as if it had been done for the sole purpose of provoking the thought-heavy silence

Both were being assaulted by images of that Friday night. It was easy when they were drunk, but it was difficult to face it on such a day. Kaoru dragged her teeth over her bottom lip, to peel away the dried skin and reveal new, moist skin underneath. Soujirou was the one guy she had almost never felt nervous around, and it irritated her that she had to recede to that today. They were accustomed to the burping competitions and laughing fits that resulted from either grossing each other out or admitting some random, embarrassing blunder. She would wake up with a terrible hangover, looking her absolute worst, and stumble shamelessly into the kitchen to join Soujirou in his fridge-raiding quest – grime, droopy eyes, smudged make up, wild hair and all. They didn't care – one could say they just took each other as they were, and it was always enough.

Soujirou, on the other hand, was slowly becoming aware of how ridiculously and inexcusably beautiful she was, and how unfair it was to the rest of the world, him included. He didn't know how he had never seen it before – she was just too close and too familiar to see as anything more than his favourite person alive. Kaoru? Sexy? Since when?

Since forever, it seemed. He had always been aware that she was breathtakingly attractive, but never had he lost his breath over it, until now. Something in the vodka had somehow broken down those walls, revealing to them both what really lay beneath.

For a while, they'd had a remarkable friendship. It was too good to mess up over the chemistry that plagued them, with every fit of laughter and every accidental touch. There had always been a spark, dangerously visible to all that knew them. It had been shoved into the corner of their lives, never to be mentioned, never to be considered, and absolutely never to be addressed. It wasn't just because Kaoru had been taken with someone else this whole time – they were silently aware that they weren't ready to handle something of this magnitude, and therefore left it alone.

And for six months, they surely did leave it alone, surviving the fatal physical attraction until they couldn't kid themselves any longer. The cat was out of the bag, and they were powerless to do anything more than sit back and watch as it wreaked havoc on their carefully balanced lives. The silence persisted because there was nothing to say, and nothing that could be said, to quell the swirling emotions and unending reminiscence.

But that didn't stop him from trying.

"Kao…" he said, taking his eyes from the road and resting them on her face.

"Souji?" She turned to him expectantly.

"With Amar…how did it go?" He asked nervously, remembering what had happened right before Kaoru left the high school building with her boyfriend in tow.

She lowered her head. "It didn't end well."

"But why?" he asked, scoffing at how easily complicated these simple things could be.

"You know how he is," she said, giving him a 'no duh' kind of look. "It's in his blood. But he turned it into something much bigger than it should have been, even for a guy like him. I can't stand it anymore… my parents will just have to suck it up."

Soujirou sighed with exasperation. Yeah, they'd kind of climbed all over each other while he tried to convince her to spit out the name of the girl who was crushing on him. Maybe they were in a pretty awkward position when Amar came into the room. Or… very awkward. Coming in to find a guy sitting in his girlfriend's lap, her legs wrapped around his waist, probably would have been kind of annoying, if he didn't understand the simple nature of their pathetic, insulting and drinking-based friendship. Whether he understood it or not, Soujirou didn't know, but he knew that if he didn't, only he was to blame.

They had been talking enthusiastically with the others about the kind of alcohol they drank on Friday night, and the way they drove Misao up Kaoru's bedroom wall, pretending to be idiots, and how they got her so worked up she decided to go home early, and bring him with her.

Who would have known that Amar was lurking by, listening to the whole thing?

He remembered how she flinched against him, when Amar made himself known and strode towards her. He'd watched her boyfriend lean over, a hand clamped so tightly on her shoulder that she tried to shrug it off, while whispering cold words into her ear.

Soujirou had known better than anybody in the room how badly Kaoru had wanted to push him away. He saw the small sense of fear that instead locked her arms to her sides. And when Amar stormed away from the scene, he watched her recede into the shell that she didn't often hide in. He couldn't help but clench his jaw with disgust, that she had to fear so many people.

He knew that she already had a tough situation with her parents. She often kept to herself when it came to what really went on inside that house whenever her parents were in the country, but one thing that everybody knew is that her clothing became a huge issue. He would be the one who insisted on unveiling her as soon as she got to school. On the first day she had to come in, head to toe in black, the first thing she did was remove the face-covering. Her friends had all been told what to expect, so Soujirou rushed towards her, bounced on the spot, and chanted 'can I help you take it off, can I help you take it off, can I help you take it off?'

She would always smirk and say yes, and he would give a little cheer before grasping the hem of her burkah and lifting the whole thing over her head. He enjoyed it because it was like watching a flower grow in fast-forward, like they always did on National Geographic. She was, more often than not, wearing colourful, tight-fitted, flattering clothes with glistening shoes to match, and to see it all emerge from a cloak of black never lost its shimmering appeal.

"How is it not going well?" he asked as he turned a corner to get to Misao's apartment building.

She explained the public humiliation he'd put her through when he yelled at her all the way home, and the demand he'd made to tag along, the things he said, his obvious sexism and his sickening attitude, and the way he'd shoved her into the doorframe, simply to put her in her place. And the whole way through her detailed account of Aly's violent fight with Amar, Soujirou suffered side-splitting laughter.

"Man, your little brother kicks ass. I love that guy," Soujirou said, laughing.

"Yeah, but Amar doesn't. It was like he'd rip him to pieces if I hadn't gotten in the way."

"That guy needs a proper dick. Seriously. Who battles a little kid?"

"That's exactly why I'm not with him anymore."

"Maybe it's better off this way… but your parents… what will they do?" He was surprised.

"Fuck my parents. They'll be mad but they'll have to get over it," she said, voice filled with relief. "You have no idea how glad I am."

He smiled at her. "I think I do."

"I just… don't know what to do sometimes. Everything can seem perfect… but it can all go to bust in a second if there's no work involved. The ground we all stand on is so slippery you never know when you're gonna fall… but there's always the possibility. In fact, it's inevitable."

"Hey," he said, reaching out to place his hand over hers in friendly reassurance. "Not many women have what you do. Not all have what you have to offer. You'll be fine."

She smiled, but more because her eyes were trained on his hand, covering hers, than because of his words.

They stopped at the alcohol shop before making their way back to his house. While Kaoru and Misao did nothing but obliviously attract stares from the other soon-to-be drunkards, Soujirou picked out their usual selection of booze and hauled the many bottles of Vodka to the counter.

They had been in this store countless times before. The workers that ran the place knew them well, and gave them knowing smiles while Kaoru, looking older than her age and avoiding the chaos of legalities, would lean over the desk on her elbows and stare at the black marble of the bar, her cleavage unintentionally deepening, while she made her purchases.

"What's going on with you two?"Misao asked, leaning in and speaking with her impish, hushed tone. "If anybody is radiating sexual tension in this place it's you."

Kaoru's eyes widened and she leaned in to speak more softly to her. "Misao, shut the hell up! It's Souji, for god's sake. Souji!"

"Poor Sou is not as bad as you think," she said, one of her green eyes disappearing beneath her trademark wink. "He's adorable. A lot of girls have wanted a piece of him in the past you know, not just me."

Kaoru cast her eyes downwards to her gold wristwatch, staring blankly at the ticking hands as she listened. "So? That doesnt mean I want to be with him, you know. I know he's cute and he know's we're cute. Can't we all just be cute together without messing it all up?"

Misao rolled her eyes, the striking green of her irises piercing the room as they revolved like little balls of the most expensive jade. "You are incredibly naiive, Kaoru my love."

She cocked an eyebrow with mock contempt. "Oh please. Just because you're the only non-virgin around here."

Misao smirked suggestively. "Yep! I'm rather decieving, don't you think?"

"Not when you make that face. Keep it up for too long and every bloke in here will jump on you in no time,"she teased, flashing her white teeth with a dazzling smile.

Her friend felt eyes on her and looked up to see the shop boy staring at them, his eyes looking larger than they did when they first arrived and his mouth parted a little too obviously.

"Is there something you need?" She asked, beginning a cruel game of seduction with her batting eyelashes and her cheeky smile.

Kaoru gaped at the show before her and turned away from the scene, just in time to find Soujirou sulking towards her as if he wanted to look like a troubled youngster being dragged to the mall by his mother.

"Your move, Kao," he said, slumping towards her for the sake of abnormality, and he pinched her side with a bratty pout. Misao had watched them stand side by side at the counter, pondering over the way Soujirou took a small step towards her, and the way she subconsciously leaned into his touch, just to feel her bare arm against his. He leaned over, making it quite obvious that his brat performance wasn't yet over, and peered with mock curiousity into her wallet, like a child once again waiting for the payment to be made so his mother could leave this dratted place and take him home to watch TV.

For the sake of observation, she trailed towards the door of the shop and watched from a could have believed she was getting carried away, but it was just like him to take things that far. It was as if being normal was terribly boring for him.

Kaoru humored him for a while, patting his thick, chocolate brown hair with maternal affection and talking to him with the condescending tone of any adult to a five-year-old, and he started whining insistently on the amount of time it was taking that traumatized shop boy to sift through the cash and give her the required change.

When he handed it over, hands trembling as he tried to hide his nervousness around girls such as Kaoru and Misao, she turned towards her dumb-buddy and stuck her tongue out at him. The brat performance was over.

"This is definitely what we need to get there," she said with a wide grin, displaying with a flourish the array of bottles before her.

"Yeah, yeah, but you know already that the last five are for Misao. God knows how much it takes for that crazy woman to get drunk."

Misao giggled from behind and they looked over their shoulders to grin at her. She held up her middle finger, and Kaoru answered with the same finger, as if flashing her gold and sapphire ring to challenge the emeralds on her friend's middle finger.

"Very sexy," Misao said with suggestive approval, pretending to run her tongue over the length of her own finger to bait her best friend.

Kaoru turned her back to the counter and leaned against it, never breaking her eye contact with Misao as she flicked her tongue over her upper lip, sending the message to any spectator that she and Misao were planning a sensual night with their flirtatious teases.

The second the bags were packed, the two skipped through the alcohol store, lined with its cosmopolitan, black-framed and glass-topped fridges, a bag in hand for each, while poking each other to death with excitement that they would be together again, after a week spent apart.

"Damn, these bags are heavy," Soujirou whined as they proceeded down the pavement, busy with people, towards the car. "Can you like… take them from my pansy-ish arms?"

"Oh, fuck off," Misao laughed, her green eyes rolling like marbles. She reached for one of the bags when he pulled back.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding," he tried to say while Kaoru pulled the bag of vodka from his hand and Misao commandeered the beers.

"Do you have to be such a dickwad?" Kaoru asked playfully.

"No… why is it that every time I make a convenient joke you women have to make me feel like a five year old girl?"

"Because we have always known that you were born to annoy us," she said.

"No…" he said light-heartedly, "you love me."

"Yeah, yeah," she giggled.

"Would you two shut up?" Misao said as she opened the door to Soujirou's four-by-four. She shoved the beer into the back seat and turned to grin at them both. "Tonight we are gonna get stone-cold hell-burning mother-fucking drunk."

"Oh damn," Soujirou muttered to himself. It was one of those rare moments where he actually grew as tired of his stupidness as his parents and his girls did. "How could I forget those..."

Kaoru and Misao, upon hearing the word 'forget,'sprang up from their gossiping in the back seat and leaned over the headrests to look him in the eye.

"What did you forget?" Kaoru asked darkly, her glare promising punishment if he made them suffer for yet another one of his blunders.

"Ladies, we have a problem,"he said, his eyes widening and his brow flexing with nervousness at the glares he recieved. "I forgot the gate keys inside the house."

"Oh, great, wanker," Misao let out an exhasperated groan and flopped into the back seat. "Now what?"

"Now, Souji will grow some balls and find a way to get us inside," Kaoru announced, her tone leaving no room for negotiation.

"Jesus, woman, I would hate to be your kid," he blurted, giving her one of his 'please-dont-castrate-me' looks.

"You might as well be my kid because I will not leave you alone until you do something to let us get inside."

He pressed his lips into a nervous line and got out of the car. The girls could see the outside of his house, surrounded by a concrete parking space fit for two four-by-four wagons. It was plain, and modest in its own way, but it was his.

"I'm gonna climb the gate,"he announced, "so you damned women leave me alone."

"Good thinking," Kaoru grinned. "But it's at least fifteen feet tall."

Soujirou gave the gate a once-over, from top to bottom, and looked back at her. "You still think I'm a pansy! I swear, i will never joke around you again!"

The night was ringing with the eery silence that only ever existed in the dark, clear-aired outskirts of London, and Soujirou was now piercing that silence so loudly the neighbors were starting to peek from their windows.

"That is not what I meant!"Kaoru started, but when his mouth started moving double speed and his words began to make less sense, she decided not to bother. "Okay, okay, okay, then PROVE to me that you're not a pansy."

"Fine!" he huffed. "As usual, I will do what you tell me to and I will climb the gate just to prove to the 'untouched virgin princess'that I am not a pansy."

"Oh you did not just say the V word. Be careful Soujirou, or I may rattle the gate while you're at the top," she grumbled.

Soujirou managed the task effortlessly. He had the grip of a jujitsu student, and the muscle to top it off. But he didn't have the self control and focus that he needed to pass his red belt and proceed to the black belt. Obviously, when he was around halfway up, he started to freak out.

"Soujirou, just keep your hold tight, and watch where you put your feet. Just kick off your shoes and i'll bring them."

"Fuck you, you little virgin! You made me do this!" he whined.

She didn't take him seriously. She knew it was just the way things worked, and simply smiled.

He held a forceful grip on the iron bars of the gate, to hold his weight while he kicked off his shoes. Using the hand-eye coordination he could only have developed from martial arts, he led one of them to land on her head.

"Ouch!"Kaoru yelped, and her hand rose to cup the pain in the back of her head. "You pansy! You did that on purpose!"

"Yeah, I did, dearie. Revenge is..." he found that he couldn't logically make the phrase work with his situation, and had a momentary brain freeze. "Revenge is a dish.... best served cold, but I decided to serve it HOT,"he said, grunting while he hauled his weight up to the top of the gate. He'd felt much more secure without his slippery converse to hinder his usual grip.

"Soujirou, you are an asshole!" she said, trying to appear angry, but failing to bottle her laughter. "The last thing i wanted tonight was an upward view of your arse, your shoe on my head, and no way to get into your house!"

Soujirou got to the top of the gate and straddled it, using all the balance from his training to keep from slipping off. It wasn't his physical calm he had to worry about though – eight years of jujitsu had reached his muscles, his bones, his heart and his lungs. It had just never reached his head.

"|Holy fuck, you guys are far down," he mumbled, as if he was about to start panicking.

"Well you should have brought the keys!"Kaoru called up to him.

"Shut up woman! I wouldn't be up here if you hadn't called me a pansy!"

"What?" Kaoru placed both hands on her hips. "Are you insane? If I hadn't called you a pansy we'd be out here all night!"|

Misao folded her arms as she watched the feud continue before her eyes. As she cracked her neck to the left, the iron knob for the gates caught her eye. So there was a knob, not just a simple lock. The voices of her two best friends became nothing but screeches and spitting in the background as she curled her delicate fingers around the knob and turned it.

And all of a sudden – a click.

The gate was open.

"You forget everything!" Kaoru growled, "don't you dare tell me I'm the idiot here!"

"At least I don't sleep on a gay four-foot high bed with PINK curtains on the inside!"

"Oh wow, Souji, glad to see you have expanded your horizons in the creative insults department, but you're still a friggin pansy!"

"SHUT UP!"Misao screeched.

"What?"Soujirou growled from up above."

"The gate was never locked, you wanker. Now get down here and park the car!"

Kaoru's jaw dropped. "We spent fifteen minutes trying to get Souji up that gate, when it was already open?"

"Yeah, pretty much,"Misao said jeeringly. "You two are a coupla' morons! Now get down here!"

Soujirou slumped over on the top of the gate. "I don't even know if I can get down. Thanks, you friggin virgin,"he said, glaring at Kaoru with eyes that she found inexplicably adorable, looking down at her with mock hate from fifteen feet in the air.

"You'll find a way,"she said cheerily. "Misao, take the keys. Park this thing and get inside."

Being teenagers, the tour of the house was neglected. They had sailed straight inside, to open the bags and pop the bottle caps as if it was New Year's all over again. Kaoru and Misao laughed mockingly at the lone male when he chipped his molar trying to open a beer bottle with his teeth, and squealed with surprise when he came towards them, thrashing the lager all over the floor while trying to wet them.

"You hurt my manly pride!" He hissed. "You bitches are gonna have to pay."

"Hey Kaoru, did you hear that?"Misao said between bouts of laughter, "pencil-dick wants to take us out!"

Kaoru burst into laughter at the look of pure horror on his face. "Pencil dick!"

"You heard me!"Misao taunted.

He let out a deep breath and clambered up onto one of the sofas. "You are not gonna call me a pencil dick! I demand a drinking competition! And i will own you!'

"Now the lightweight wants to beat us,"Misao whispered. "This should be interesting."

"|Hey, Womenz! No whispering, there are three of us in this room!" he spat, making the rat face of disapproval that made any surrounding female want to squeeze his cheeks.

"You are such a drama queen!"Kaoru indicted confidently, "We will have this competition and I will win!"

"Oh yeah?" He growled, leaning forward to look her right in the eyes. He didn't mean to brush the bridge of her nose with the tip of his. He didn't mean to get in such a strong wiff of her bodily smell – a sweet, body-heat, musky, feminine smell that radiated from every cell in her being, faintly dabbed with salt from the sweat she'd shed screaming at him so vigorously.

His breath died halfway up his throat. He pulled awkwardly away, unsure of how to hide this new, tempestuous confession from himself. In the end, he decided to just leave it be.

And the three of them raced to finish their first bottles. It was tough, but Kaoru won, and she was so proud to go from the worst drinker to the fastest that she stood on one of the drawing room couches and laughed provocatively down at them, until Soujirou wrapped one arm around her legs and hurried away, with her strewn over his shoulder.

Soujirou put on some USA rock, from the eighties, he told them, and as soon as the head banging began, the drunkenness took hold of them. Misao proudly made a show of her sobriety and walked around the room, getting this or taking off that, her sobriety quite obvious in comparison to the buzz her companions were feeling.

"You're so fucking boring," Kaoru said as she watched.

"Hahaha! More beer for you, woman!" Soujirou led them to the kitchen and showed them the huge box of imported German beer. They looked at him with surprise.

"My sister's," he explained innocently. "I had to share this place with both of them… but now they're both in college," he stated with a wide grin. "Last time they came back was a month ago and they left all this with them."

"Something tells me," Misao said, "that this isn't the first time you've copped from your sister's beer collection."

"Misao the know-it-all," Kaoru said, her voice deeper and smoother than usual. It was a message to both of them that the lightweight wouold soon be reaching her peak.

"Hahahaha! You go Kao, she really is the know-it-all," Soujirou said, poking Misao in the stomach.

She rolled her eyes. "You know I'm not the ticklish one here. And yes, I know it all and I'm proud of it. You two would have been so lost without me just now, and you know it."she stood straight, that ubiquitous smirk of triumph once again gracing her face.

"Yeahh,"Kaoru droned. "Lets give a toast to Misao, the woman who opened a door,"she announced.

"You mean the woman who opened a gate, which I was sitting on top of, you damned cavewoman," Soujirou corrected, just to bring the environment to the level of obnoxiousness that he was used to.

As they reached inside and pulled out a can each, Kaoru gave his arm a backhand slap.

"She's rabid," Misao whispered, "don't worry."

"Rabid? That's disgusting. We should put her in a circus and show her off when she starts acting like a dog," he whispered back.

Kaoru gaped. "I'm right here and I heard that. Man-whore." She narrowed her eyes at him, took a gulp of beer from the can, and sauntered irritably away from the scene.

Misao raised the open lid to her lips. But before she could get a taste in, her cell phone rang.

"Uh… how about you order pizza while I take this call?" She asked as she passed her in the hallway. "I'm starving."

Kaoru shrugged while Misao fled up the marble stairs to the hallway above. They heard her speak into the phone but couldn't bother to distinguish her words.

"Okay," she said, "pizza time. You will do it this time cause I paid for the drinks and you've been so unkind all night."

"Oh, really?"he asked, brows arched at the surprising new information. "I didn't know!"

"Well I just thought you should,"she said, smiling sweetly.

"I guess because I'm your man-whore I have to do all the work,"he said, sighing hard in exaggerated annoyance.

After he placed an order, screwing it up four times because he couldn't think straight, he pulled Kaoru towards him and whispered in her ear.

"She's gonna be on the phone for a while. So how bout we do a disappearing act?"

She smiled and nodded. "And we'll appear at just the right moment, eh?"

"You got it, Kao."

He opened one of the windows to the drawing room and stepped out into the patio from the glass doors. "There, in that bush," he said, pointing to the mature hedges below the window. "We can fit easily between it and the windowsill."

He crawled beneath most of the thick leafing and resurfaced at the point right outside the window, smiling a little as he imagined Misao, looking around for them after finishing the call. Kaoru followed close behind, getting dirt on her arms but not caring at all, and she laughed a little when she tried to pull up into a standing point next to him.

"You're so freaking un-flexible, damnit. Just wind your way through!"

But she couldn't, because he occupied most of the space. So as she struggled through the entire bush reacted with violent quivering. He watched her struggle past the branches and laughed jeeringly. "You're too big to fit through! Didn't I tell you to lose some weight on Friday, woman?"

She glared at him, trying to fight into the one third of the space Soujirou had left for her, but something ripped at her side and she gasped, recoiling a little. "Fuck!"

"What?" He asked. "What is it?"

Her side still prickled with the pain, and when she placed a finger on her side, she felt moisture. "Damnit…" she hissed with the stinging agony and straightened up regardless of the twigs in her hair.

"Show me, Kao," he said, making her turn towards him.

"It's right here," she said, lifting her top a little, lacking the space to bend around and get a good look at the damage.

"Oh, shit," he said sympathetically as he kneeled to look at it. "An open ended twig, I guess… but you're bleeding. I'm sorry… maybe climbing through here was a bad idea."

"You fucking think so?" she said, but with good nature.

"Look, I said I was sorry," he said, but he made her lean back against the windowsill so he would have better access to her wound, and he pulled off his shirt.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I just need to staunch it," he said, itching from the twigs that reached out like little hands to touch his bare skin. He pressed his bundled t-shirt against the open abrasion, feeling guilty, and as he watched a small spot of red soak through the fabric, he noticed another mark on her skin. It was a small circular scar on her side, darker than her normal complexion… almost like a burn. He frowned, eyes trained on the marring blemish that seemed to be so much a part of her that he couldn't imagine her skin without it.

"Is it okay?" She asked, stomach muscles tensing.

"Yeah," he said tenderly. "It's all right."

And the music changed-it was a change they both noticed. A woman's hearty, high-pitched voice seemed to whip through the night, not forgetting the violins in the background.

"Opera?" Kaoru asked with a little laugh.

"I swear I didn't put it there," he said innocently. "Seriously, how the fuck did that get on my CD?"

She laughed a little, and he glared up at her. "Stop laughing, woman! It's practically forcing the blood out when it looks like it's about to stop running like a bitch." He pressed the t-shirt harder against the small wound.

"Okay, I'm sorry, Souji," she said, the sweetness in her voice obviously brought on by the sweetness of the liquor.

"I'll change it soon," he said, addressing the opera music. "Before Misao notices."

So they stayed like that, heads floating silently from the stillness as the alcohol seemed to protest to them that their balance was lacking and they'd soon need to take a seat. They were in complete silence as he held the t-shirt against her bleeding abrasion and the small, circular scar continuously caught his eye. The minor stretch marks over her hip bones were of no interest to him-he knew what they were and that almost every woman got them through development, and knew it was an irritating subject from the way Kaoru reacted to Amar's constant curiosity over the long, silvery lines at her sides.

And the bleeding stopped within thirty seconds of the last word spoken. "Okay," he said, "let's get something to cover that… somewhere in this freaking house."

She laughed a little, and noticed that as soon as he straightened up and stood, he was swaying. "Damn… I dunno how but I swear I forgot I was drunk."

She laughed a little. "So did I but I was standing up so my head was spinning mostly."

He stood still for a moment, blinking and waiting for his sight to regulate. "Damn," he cursed out of impatience. "Who knew brains took so long to do what you tell them to? It's usually the opposite."

"Come on, get over the windowsill." She gave him a sweet smile. "I dunno how annoyed I'm gonna get, stuck in this bush forever, so go before my smile shatters into one of those scary frowns."

"I'm going, I'm going, damnit, just whatever you do, don't bring out the frown," Soujirou said, climbing through the window and back into the room, and the first thing he did was shiver at the incredibly irritating opera that filled the house, his bloodstained shirt still bundled up in one hand. Swaggering unsteadily across the drawing room, into the hallway, and right towards the music player, he fiddled with the buttons as he heard Misao speak on the phone upstairs, her voice echoing through the large hallways. He paused to pull his shirt back on, not liking the thought of Misao coming down the stairs and seeing him topless, and he regarded the patches of drying blood all over the bottom left side of the shirt for a moment. He couldn't help it. His head was spinning both with thoughts and with an unexplainable fondness as his fingers rested on one particularly large spot of dampness, his orange shirt dyed unevenly red. But he looked up at the doorway to the drawing room, imagining her just beyond it, and the moment passed, allowing him to return to the music player and the recently extracted opera CD. Pressing play, and stop, and play again, he didn't notice the small gasp of surprise that came a fraction of a second before crashing and tumbling sounded through the house.

He turned frantically and rushed towards the drawing room opening. But when he got there, there was nothing he could do to help the laughter as he discovered Kaoru, underneath the window, or half beneath it, tangled in the pile of pillows and a large, leafy potted plant, one leg still bent over the windowsill. The pillows moved and fell away as she struggled, giggling all the way, but she was so badly caught in the avalanche of silk and cotton that after a moment of persistence, she dropped her arms and laughed.

"Damn," he said, half tripping towards her as the world span and she lay in the center of it. "You… uh… okay?" He tried to smother his laughter, but without effect.

Kaoru had tried to get through, placing one leg through the window, but as she tried to crawl out one of the metal nails for the picture frames had snagged on her jeans and she fell headfirst onto the pillows. "I'm so stupid," she giggled.

"Yes you are," he said fondly, smiling widely and trying hard not to burst into laughter.

"How did that happen?" She asked with a chuckle, twisting around to gain eye contact.

"Vodka made it happen."

"A bottle made that happen?"

"Yes,"he said, his eyes widening as he merged into that story-telling fantasy land personality. "Vodka is filled with magic."

"That's really really cool," she said, relaxed enough to play along in his mind-game. "Now i'm gonna try to..."she pushed herself up, but her arms were too weak and her muscles too loosened. She flopped face-down into the cushions with an exhausted groan.

"Okay, okay," he said with gentleness in his voice, "don't worry. I'll get you out."

She tried battling with the pillows again, yet her state and position made it impossible. She tried pulling on another pillow to haul up her weight, but she ended up pushing herself only further into the mass, and her left leg was so awkwardly strung over the windowsill that it was impossible to move.

"Uh… help?" she giggled.

He had to stumble over the mound of pillows to find his way to the windowsill, and with one hand secure on her hip to keep from hurting her in her position, he used the other to hold her ankle and cautiously lift it from its hooked place on the metal frame. He swayed from drunkenness as he tried to find her hand, protruding from somewhere in the pile of pillows. When he found it, he grasped it and tried pulling upwards, but he wasn't strong enough to lift her in a single move, and she was too tangled and too deeply buried to lift herself. Her hair tumbled wildly around her and he could still smell the jasmine perfume that lingered within the depths of the raven mass of strands. He found her torso somewhere in the mass and pushed her onto her back, still half encased by the pillows. They were both in a laughing fit by then, and the joy filled the room until it was bursting with self-created ecstasy.

"Come here, you cow," he cooed as he laughed, and he placed both hands on her sides, careful to avoid the fragile and carefully staunched scratch. Her own hands grasped his arms for support as he hauled her up, and like a flower she bloomed from her burial place beneath the surface, hair swaying from the sudden, smooth movement.

But laughing and drunk and absolutely drugged with their humour, they found themselves in the middle of a mess of bouncy pillows, doubled over with the giggles and too drunk to properly stand. So she had clutched his chest, fingers digging into the fabric of his bloodstained shirt, and his arms were again around her, more for balance than for affection. Still, to the two who leaned dependently on each other, it felt like both.

"Hey, hey, hey," Misao said as she entered. She froze for a moment when she saw Soujirou's bloody shirt. "What the hell is up with all the blood!? Oh god, are you okay, Soujirou?"

His eyes widened, but when he realized what she was talking about, he pointed at the girl in his arms. "It was HER fault," he said proudly.

"Kaoru, are you okay?" Misao asked with a perplexed look on her face.

"It wasn't me! It was the fucking twig out there in the bush!" she said heatedly.

"Umm…" the green eyed girl frowned a little. "Okay… what the hell were you doing in the bush?"

They both opened their mouths, but a sudden afterthought prevented them from answering.

"Never mind, don't answer that. I don't think I wanna know," she said, walking towards them on the pile of pillows.

So they tried struggling past the mound of inconveniently bouncy pillows, struggling with every muscle in their two bodies because tripping seemed so easy.

"You look like you both need some help," she observed, but when she tried, they all ended up falling and she effortlessly pulled out of the expansive mound, half sober and in far more control over where her body decided to take her.

Eventually they ended up crawling on all fours, as it was easier and required far less mutual support.

"So who was it?" Kaoru asked with only a slight slur in her voice.

"Aoshi, calling from Houston. Really, this Oil business is killing him. But now, it's time for some fun, eh?" She giggled and led them from the drawing room to the patio outside.

"Hey Misao," Kaoru said suggestively, "are you feeling another strip and dip coming on?"

The girl with the green eyes giggled sinuously. "Perhaps… but I'm not doing it alone."

And Kaoru was the first to pull off her jeans and her soft cotton vest, and she stood in the intensity of her almost naked body, clothed only in a pair of attractive lace underwear in dark brown, lined with black. It suited her, without a doubt, and Soujirou was seen, only for a moment, returning inside. She shrugged it off and dove in, her head submerging and hair tie slipping from the cascading fall of blackness. But as soon as she surfaced, the knives of ice brought a loud, explicit curse from her usually pretty little mouth.

"Is it that bad?" Misao asked from the shore.

"Only at first," Kaoru said, so drunk she almost forgot to hold her breath when she again plunged below the surface. "So get in here, biatch."

Misao, in her white bra and purple underwear, looked her usual cute self, and she entered with a bomb that wet everything within four feet of her. She surfaced, laughing hysterically at the overriding cold, but when Soujirou emerged, looking attractive in his swim trunks, they laughed even harder.

"You gotta be kidding!" she jeered. "You got _changed_?"

Kaoru giggled ceaselessly, trying not to shiver. "You could've just stripped with us, little Souji."

"Little! Holy shit… you better watch your mouth, woman. First it's pansy, then it's pencil-dick, then it's 'little Souji.'What the hell is next?" He dove in, and Kaoru and Misao instantly went to him for some body contact. The cold was killer, an inevitable consequence of having an outdoor pool in such a cold part of the world, but it was more the need for human flesh on human flesh, driven by total instinct, that brought the threesome of party animals together.

And the night continued in a wave of drunkenness and desire. The threesome ran in and out of the pool, to the garden at intervals to lie on the heavenly grass and try to climb the willow trees in their stupor. It was more than entertaining enough to let loose all of the stress from recent happenings – Aoshi's departure for an Oil trip, and Kaoru's end to an eleven month engagement, and the strain on her friendship with Soujirou after the events of Friday night and the subtle revelation of hidden feelings – but to give in to the need for fun, and the need to party, and the desire to just go insane, together, for one thing, had always felt like more than they could ever ask for.

They had shared drunken nights and morning hangovers in the past – they had all taken coffee from the same pot and ibuprofen from the same bottle for the same kind of headache. It was their thing, to get wasted on the weekends and crash at one of the three potential houses. They took it as their weekly treat for taking so much bullshit all five days.

"Kaoru," she said conversationally, "why are you all slimy?"

They were staring up at the stars, the three of them, all scantily clad, the girls in their bras and underwear, and Soujirou topless in his swim shorts alone-all bare, all freezing, all lying in the grass, and all totally liberated from the pains of day-to-day living.

"I put on moisturizer," Kaoru said drunkenly. "So the stuff got wet when we all… jumped in and stayed wet and now… now I'm like a snail."

"Ooh, sexy," Misao meowed, running her fingers over Kaoru's totally lubricated legs. "Souji," she said, looking at him as he lay close by, in his own little world.

He looked up. "Eh?"

"Feel her. She's all slimy."

He reached out and tentatively rested his fingertips on her stomach, totally bare and shining wetly in the ornamental lights by the willow trees. She was completely oiled over… slick and smooth as a serpent… and as alluring. Her eyes lay dreamily on the sky above, her head tilted a little, wet hair haloing her face as her body stretched out on the green below her. She was purely attractive, enticing, even. He couldn't keep his hand from her the second it came into contact with that flesh. He was powerless to stop it.

Luckily, Misao slapped his knuckles sharply. "She's _my_ bitch. Get off of her."

He laughed and Kaoru laughed, as if to cover up a moment of chemistry that held far more significance than they could imagine, and they returned to their previous positions. In and out of the freezing pool, going from willow tree to willow tree with the fierce determination to reach the large crown of thin and winding branches above their heads, and of course, in and out of the house, leaving wet trails of pool water through the drawing room to get more vodka or more beer. And it never got old. The beer was their fuel, and their desire for full-blown fun was their thirst. Soujirou couldn't help but admire the two girls in their pretty underwear, both gifted with attractive forms though both lacked the slender body that came so naturally to most asian girls. Kaoru was especially unique, with her light tan and long, messy hair and rapturous smile. He had never before noticed that his friend… Kaoru, the one he burped at during their lunch breaks, and the one he had tickle wars with, and the one he played video games with and shared inside jokes with, was more attractive than he'd ever cared to notice. Who knew?

Misao shivered with uneasiness as the vodka she'd taken like water began to pull her into a dreamlike state. As always, Kaoru was the most drunk, the most daring, the most out of control. It was pure playfulness and tomfoolery that led her to seize her best friend and crush her in a passionate, whore-like and meaningless kiss. They had often teased the five men in their gang with a small chance of making out, but never had they mustered the daringness to actually pursue such a random and candid desire. Now their tongues were mingling and their lips were crushed together, and the reality they knew ceased to exist.

They had almost forgotten that Soujirou was even there, but when Kaoru pulled away she giggled. "You taste like beer. Yummy."

The three of them laughed, and Misao swiftly unhooked Kaoru's bra from its tight hold on her breasts. Soujirou's heart almost leapt up into his throat when he saw the straps fall from her flawless shoulders, but he felt the rising heartbeat calm the second she refused and turned her back on them, to replace the undergarment that never should have been removed.

"Hey Misao, do me a favour and drink the spirit left over in the bottle," Soujirou said.

She looked towards the bottle, filled with an alcohol in almost fluorescent green. "You're fucking kidding me. Absinthe!" she gasped, running towards it.

"Yeah… it was a gift."

"You sure drank a lot of it so far," She said, picking it up from the long dining table.

"Nah, it was mostly used when my parents dropped by to say hi a few days ago. They copped it from me. But I only tried a little of it so I'm fine. Drink it… I had a feeling we'd need it for you to get as drunk as we are… then we'd finally have some proper fun."

But she overdid it. The delicious stuff just kept coming. There were only two shots worth of it left in the bottle in the first place, but they did the trick. She kissed Kaoru more, complaining about the pyjamas she'd put on even though they were still relatively sexy, and eventually sank into a puddle-like state she hadn't acquired from alcohol in a long time.

She saw the two figures jumping on the sofa. But her head swam past any recognition of what they were really doing. She was so drunk that all they became were… people… or _things_… bouncing up and down. Why? She didn't know, and didn't have the consciousness to ask. All she recognized was a creeping feeling… a horrible one… that crawled through her bloodstream and infected every inch of her skin with goose pimples. It lifted her heart rate and shot her breathing into shallow, sharp inhales and ultra-fast exhales. She could recognize, in the midst of it all, that this feeling was called terror. Terror from the images she saw, of Aoshi, with a lovely blonde Londoner, closer to his age and more of a woman, planting kisses on his neck that he enjoyed, and Aoshi looking regrettably towards his girlfriend as he told her that she was just too young for him, and the images that reminded her of all the wrongs and infidelities she'd committed in her relationship that made her deserve his mistreatment. She covered her face in her hands, feeling like a grainy photograph, and tried desperately hard not to sob.

"Hey," a gentle, feminine voice whispered, and she felt warm arms around her small frame. "You okay, babes?"

Misao's head span and she trembled with fear… but fear of what? What was there to be afraid of? She was too confused, too scared, to even address such things. But she knew the voice was familiar… knew that she was intimate with the person holding her, and knew that she had close relations with the voice. It was a voice she could literally lose herself in if she wanted; she trusted it so much. It was a voice she could hide beneath, and she was in a pair of arms that she knew, almost by nature, she could detach herself inside and still be safe. She was too clouded by the alcohol to remain awake, and somehow found her way to one of Soujirou's comfortable couches without a problem – too drunk she was to realize that Kaoru had supported her on the way to the softest of couches in the drawing room, and had stumbled upstairs, drunk but not as drunk as her friend now, to retrieve a thick duvet and cover her tenderly with it. And as the music raged on, completely taken care of by that soft voice with the gentle touch and the support and the maternal care she often received only from her own parents, Misao drifted into a deep sleep.

And woke up in silence, without the shivers, but with a pounding headache instead. She rose numbly, sliding from beneath the blanket, to find that she was utterly alone in the huge space. There was no presence outside or inside, but the room had a feeling of being recently used-it was the empty beer cans on the carpet, and the half eaten pizzas, and mess of water balloons unfilled on the floor that made it seem such a way. She felt the dizziness bite her hard when she walked across the carpet and saw Soujirou's orange t-shirt, draped carelessly over the arm of the couch as if it had been thrown there, dark stains of blood vividly marring the solid fabric. Kaoru's blood. It was difficult to avoid all the random items that littered the floor – a beach towel, glasses that now carried only a faint scent of the lager that was once there, crumbs, plastic bottles of Coke and, surprisingly, a medley of fruit as if the multicoloured bowl had been knocked over – and she noted that this looked more like the remains of a wild house party, and not of three misguided drunkards.

Her silver watch caught her eye. "Four fifteen AM," she mumbled to herself. Damn, she'd been asleep a while.

She stepped on a soft fabric and felt a lump form in her throat when she saw Kaoru's small, cropped pyjama vest with the pink colour and the rich, chocolate brown hemming. And the lump threatened to grow when she saw the soft velvet of her tight pyjama pants, lying at the foot of the marble staircase.

She felt no words enter her mouth, or even taunt the very back of her throat. In all the range of her vocabulary not one word could describe the progression of nervousness and the games it played on her mind.

A sound echoed through the two-storey hallway then, ripping her from the silence of her thoughts. She froze, went rigid, as if caught in the act of a crime. But only a long period of quiet stretched ahead of her so she continued up the steps, feeling bothered because what she had so suddenly heard, she could have sworn was a female voice. It could have been a small gasp. And it could have been a stifled cry of pleasure.

Yet her mind had no room for assumptions… it was twisted with a worry that she was too drunk and too sleepy to further investigate. All she felt was that something was wrong-something had upset the balance. Balance of what? She didn't know. But she knew that as she approached the small corridor that lead to Soujirou's room, her heart was pounding wildly in her chest, screaming as loudly as it could from behind her ribs, warning her, begging her to take a step back.

And there she was, standing in the doorway, eyes resting on a scene that she was too dazed to fully recognize at first. She saw it – her own eyes were peeling over it – but what it meant eluded her like a grey cloud was screening her from the sheer intimacy and privacy of the situation she shouldn't have walked in on. Two figures, on Soujirou's bed… flat against the mattress… it was all her mind could handle until she blinked a couple times and focused.

She saw his back… Soujirou's lightly tanned back. It was curved over something or someone, his hips still hugged by the swim shorts that enhanced his attractive jujitsu-trained body.

But no… he wasn't just sitting. There was a slender hand on his back, fingers curling over the bumps in his spine. And there was another hand too, grasping his hair from an arm that rested on his left shoulder.

And there was a slender, pale-golden knee, rising from behind him. She saw hips, with misplaced and twisted underwear, pinned to the mattress beneath Soujiro.

There was a body beneath him... flexing, arching, moving to a rhythm that only they knew... a soft, feminine, muffled moan that came from the chest and through the throat only added to the sounds of ruffled clothing and creaking bedsprings and skin, pressing against skin, that conveyed enough information already, without the assistance of sight.

And realization dawned on Misao's clouded mind. She saw the brown, lacy bra that lay strewn across the mattress, and the arms around her best friend's body, and the hand in Soujirou's hair, and heard the heavy breathing that thinly pierced into the white noise of the world outside. She stepped back, gasped, hand reaching for the corner of the desk so she could support herself in the sudden wave of surprise, and anger, and sick, sick jealousy.

They were actually doing it. Soujirou had given in to her advances. He had accepted it. More than that, he flung her onto the bed and devoured it.

The one who didn't care, who always did the rejecting, who was too cute and careless for his own good, had taken his pick, and it had to be her.

It just had to be Kaoru.


	4. Reminder: Story overhaul

"Hey people

just a quick note that i'm rewriting my story, chapter by chapter, for the sake of accuracy, sense, and diversity. Kaoru and Soujirou may be slightly different in terms of background but don't fret, they are still the same. As for kenshin, he'll come back. As a sexy, love-struck metalhead who softens himself down for her and still isnt enough. His brother Shinta will be making an appearance, too... though it won't be a good one.

Thank you for your patience - i'm only done posting the prologue, chapter one and chapter two on this site, so you can read them over and see the differences while i finish rebooting the thirdchapter.

And THANK YOU for all those who reviewed :D

I hope you enjoy how this whole thing turns out..

Lynn


End file.
